Each year, county libraries team up to promote reading and civic dialogue through the shared experience of reading a common book.
This year’s selection is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. It begins in eighteenth century Ghana, where two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the same castle, and sold into slavery.
Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. This extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
Pick up a copy of the book at any YDL location or use Overdrive to borrow the eBook or audiobook.