HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi

Again, we have a story that deserves to be told, but I did not care for the manner in which it was told.  This novel is multi-generational in the extreme, and each character gets basically one chapter of coverage.  The cascade of characters all descend from two half-sisters, but I found it very hard to keep track of them all, although each successive generation’s story provides some followup on the lives of his or her mother and/or father.  The book begins with one of the sisters, an African woman, becoming the second wife (unbeknownst to the first wife) of a white slavetrader.  Her progeny stay in Africa until the 20^th century, but her half-sister is sold into slavery and sent to the U.S.  Each chapter jumps at least a decade, so that we follow slaves being held in a dungeon in western Africa, slaves in the American South, escaped slaves, freed slaves, post-Civil War migration to the North, Harlem during the Jazz Age, black junkies in the Civil Rights era, and ultimately life in the 21^st century.  Interleaved with these stories, many of which are brutally tragic, are the chapters about the lives of the first sister’s offspring in Africa.  I found the format to be choppy and confusing.  I especially found it difficult to bond with characters that I knew I would be leaving at the end of the chapter.  The author had a lot of ground to cover, and I can see how this format allowed her to hurtle through history, but I didn’t look forward to picking this book up to resume reading when I knew that the characters I had just gotten acquainted with were no longer going to receive any attention.