Homegoing

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the novel.

Pre-Reading “Icebreaker”

Where in our modern life do you see cycles of violence play out, where “evil begets evil?” Can you identify ways in which these cycles have been broken and healed?

Teaching Suggestion: This question could be assigned as a brief written response, in small group discussion, or as a larger class discussion. Gyasi plays with the “myth” of Maame and the original sin of her enslavement, a curse which is only broken centuries later by her modern descendants. Myths are always rooted in real lived experience, so prompting students to identify the evils we have inherited in our modern world will also drive them to question some of the myths at the root of these stories that seem to portray our problems as unresolvable.

Post-Reading Analysis

Why do you think Gyasi titled the novel Homegoing? What kinds of “homegoing,” or Exile and Return, do you see for various characters in the final chapters of the novel?

Teaching Suggestion: The title of the novel, Homegoing, refers to an old African American belief that after death the spirit of a slave is once again free to travel back to Africa (or alternately, to God).