Post by pennyt on Jan 7, 2019 9:29:19 GMT
Sorry all, I meant to start this thread before I went away for Christmas but it was one of a number of things that fell through the cracks!
Anyway, I know quite a few of you were planning to read Homegoing and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. There's no time-limit on these discussion threads so it doesn't matter if you don't get round to the book during this quarter. You can post comments at any point.
So - my views: [NB since I haven't included any spoilers in my comments I have left it all visible. But remember if you do include spoilers to white them out so that people only see them if they highlight that section.]
I thought this was a hugely ambitious novel that was very cleverly done. In effect it captures the whole history of black experience in America, and indeed some of the history of west Africa, in a few fairly brief snapshots: the range is quite astonishing, from local royalty, missionaries and the war with the British in Ghana, to slavery, emancipation and the struggle for equality for blacks in America. There's a huge amount of history here that I didn't know: not just the Ghanaian history which I'm woefully ignorant about, but also the history of African Americans working as coal miners after emancipation. Given the scope, the book could have been Dickensian in length and I really admired the way the author used the structure to contain it all very tightly. She's also very sparing on emotion - there are plenty of shocking and heart-wrenching scenes described, but she largely presents the scenes as fact, leaving the reader to draw inferences and react rather than labouring the point and telling the reader how to respond emotionally.
At the same time, though, I did feel there were some problems, or at least constraints, with the book's structure. Sometimes the snapshots felt a little too brief: at times I wanted to spend longer with some of the characters to understand their situation more fully and get to know them better. I liked the dual Ghanaian/American strands, and loved the way they gradually merged until everything was brought together at the end, but I did find the constant switching between the two, and the moving forward through the generations, just a little relentless at times. Ultimately, though, I prefer control and economy to sprawl so for me this wasn't a major issue.
Overall I felt the book did have something new to say about the black diaspora out of Africa and the experience of African Americans, and about black heritage, and it did it in a way that was novel and fresh. I thought it was beautifully written and, apart from the slight niggles mentioned above, I very much enjoyed reading it.
Anyway, I know quite a few of you were planning to read Homegoing and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. There's no time-limit on these discussion threads so it doesn't matter if you don't get round to the book during this quarter. You can post comments at any point.
So - my views: [NB since I haven't included any spoilers in my comments I have left it all visible. But remember if you do include spoilers to white them out so that people only see them if they highlight that section.]
I thought this was a hugely ambitious novel that was very cleverly done. In effect it captures the whole history of black experience in America, and indeed some of the history of west Africa, in a few fairly brief snapshots: the range is quite astonishing, from local royalty, missionaries and the war with the British in Ghana, to slavery, emancipation and the struggle for equality for blacks in America. There's a huge amount of history here that I didn't know: not just the Ghanaian history which I'm woefully ignorant about, but also the history of African Americans working as coal miners after emancipation. Given the scope, the book could have been Dickensian in length and I really admired the way the author used the structure to contain it all very tightly. She's also very sparing on emotion - there are plenty of shocking and heart-wrenching scenes described, but she largely presents the scenes as fact, leaving the reader to draw inferences and react rather than labouring the point and telling the reader how to respond emotionally.
At the same time, though, I did feel there were some problems, or at least constraints, with the book's structure. Sometimes the snapshots felt a little too brief: at times I wanted to spend longer with some of the characters to understand their situation more fully and get to know them better. I liked the dual Ghanaian/American strands, and loved the way they gradually merged until everything was brought together at the end, but I did find the constant switching between the two, and the moving forward through the generations, just a little relentless at times. Ultimately, though, I prefer control and economy to sprawl so for me this wasn't a major issue.
Overall I felt the book did have something new to say about the black diaspora out of Africa and the experience of African Americans, and about black heritage, and it did it in a way that was novel and fresh. I thought it was beautifully written and, apart from the slight niggles mentioned above, I very much enjoyed reading it.
