Bingo Square Round 2: Underrepresented I expected that this novel would be good given faintingviolet’s review, but it completely surpassed those expectations. I was completely blown away by this novel, and how elegantly Gyasi plotted this family epic, showing how the slave trade shaped two different countries. I have read books and novels that addressed the experiences of men and women stolen from their homes who survived the Middle Passage and were forced into the United States slavery system. I’ve read about sharecropping, prison labor, the […]
Our Histories Build Us (CBR10Bingo)
Confession: I took this book out of the library no less than twice before I managed to read it. I was intimidated by the book, both by its content and its acclaim. It has a near perfect five star rating on Cannonball Read and high rating on Goodreads where literary fiction doesn’t normally do so well. I shouldn’t have been hesitant – the book earns its high rating by being one of the most accessible works of literary and historical fiction I have possibly ever […]
21: Homegoing
I read Homegoing in 2016, along with ElCicco and a host of others since then. I won’t recap the book for you, but have enclosed the link, if you’d like a refresher on my first review. When I re-read a book I’ve read for a previous CBR, I like to be in the habit of building on the initial review and thinking about what I’ve taken away on the second reading. I find that new thoughts will emerge. And they surely did for Homegoing. This […]
History is Storytelling
“And in my village we have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.” I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that has managed to stuff so much history, trauma, heartbreak, love, hardship, and resilience into so few pages. At just 300 pages, Yaa Gyasi manages to weave a rich web of connecting stories, spanning hundreds of years in history over 7 generations. We begin with two sisters, Effia and […]
The breath of longing
So much has been written about this book here on CBR, I almost had no choice but to read it. But I wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I finally got it from Overdrive. It took me days to get into it, and I read multiple books in between the early chapters. But I stuck with it because the premise was very good, and it has received near universal praise (both here, and in the broader literary world). Sticking with a book that […]
Read this book! And then give it to someone else to read.
Here’s another one going on my “give to all my friends” list! This book is really, really good. Each chapter is a vignette of one person per generation, starting with two half-sisters, Essie and Effia. One is sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. The chapters follow six of each of their descendants in Ghana and America. As you might expect, 6 generations of African and Africa-American history includes some seriously ugly chapters: colonialism, explicit and implicit racism, the transatlantic slave trade, the Fugitive Slave […]