Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel, Homegoing, is an astonishing epic set in Ghana and the United States, about the legacy of slavery through generations. It attracted a seven-figure advance and has been described as “hypnotic” and “brilliant”, and its 26-year-old author as “stirringly gifted”
Why trace your story through the generations?
I began Homegoing in 2009 after a trip to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle [where slaves were incarcerated]. The tour guide told us that British soldiers who lived and worked in the castle often married local women – something I didn’t know. I wanted to juxtapose two women – a soldier’s wife with a slave. I thought the novel would be traditionally structured, set in the present, with flashbacks to the 18th century. But the longer I worked, the more interested I became in being able to watch time as it moved, watch slavery and colonialism and their effects – I wanted to see the through-line.
How did the dungeons make you feel?
I was devastated. I felt immense rage. The dungeons still smell after hundreds of years. There was grime on the walls and a tiny air hole at the top. When they closed the door, there was no light. Hundreds of people were kept there for three months at a time before being sent God knew where. The terror they must have felt – not knowing what was to become of them. You can imagine and you cannot possibly imagine.
The subject of slavery has produced outstanding work from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave…
And this year alone, in America, there has been The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and Grace by Natashia Deón. Slavery is something we have not gotten over, it is on people’s minds and it affects us still.
Your novel raises interesting questions about identity – how has your identity been affected by place, circumstance and genes?
Place has influenced me hugely. I was born in Ghana, grew up in America, have lived in Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama. I studied English and creative writing at Stanford and Iowa. So many people in the States grow up in one place and settle. It has been interesting, during this election, to register that places in America are vastly different and influence people’s ideologies. Getting to see that, having moved a lot myself, has been powerful.
And circumstance?
My father is a professor of francophone African literature. My mum is a nurse. Had my parents not decided to emigrate to America, my life would have been completely different. One thing I ran up against a lot as a child was that saying “black” or “Afro-American” implies a certain cultural identity that was different from mine as an immigrant. I found it difficult to feel I was being black in the right way. The older I got, the more I realised there’s no right way, that everything I do and am is also allowed to be black. It took me a long time to realise that… the word “black” can seem to generalise everything.
And genes?
We are shaped more than we know by our genes. Can trauma be imprinted on our DNA? I think trauma is inheritable.
Does suffering for black people change with every generation?
Suffering changes and stays the same. In America, the worst was never over, just made new. That was something I was trying to trace in the novel – the trail of trauma reinvented. The history of America has involved figuring out new ways to subjugate black people since the beginning. In this post-election in-between space, as Donald Trump takes over, we are wondering what fresh hell may be about to be devised.
Are you religious?
I wouldn’t describe myself as religious, although I was raised as an evangelical Pentecostal Christian in the south – a unique and fraught position. But my father would whisper: “Had the British not come to Ghana, who knows if we would be sitting here in church today.” So religion for me, growing up, was always tempered by colonialism.
Do you suffer survivor’s guilt?
Ava DuVernay, the African American director, wears a shirt on which is written: “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” So there is that feeling as well. How many hundreds of thousands of black people in this country had to die so that Ava DuVernay could sit in that director’s chair?
Are there great storytellers in your family?
So many – starting with my parents, who told grand stories at parties – a general mode of communicating among west Africans who love large, proverbial narratives. I’m shy in person. I much prefer writing it to telling it. The closer I get to me and to the truth, the more uncomfortable I am.
A history teacher in your book advises listening out for the quiet voices. Is this what you are doing?
Homegoing is very much about amplifying voices.
When you returned to Ghana, did you feel you belonged?
It is a dual thing – you belong and you don’t. I remember the Ghanaian passport official reading my name correctly and it felt like the biggest, warmest welcome. At the same time, I understand my native language but don’t speak it. So I am necessarily at this remove – the country can never be fully mine.
And how does that make you feel?
When I was young, I was anxious about the idea that so many of these things end with me. If I have children, I probably won’t be able to teach them the language or teach them to cook the food. But as I have grown older, I’ve started to understand that I am allowed to forge this new identity that is more layered and more dualistic.
Where is home for you?
It is a complicated question. Home right now is Oakland, California. But again I think I have known for many years that home, for me, can never really be a place. It is this thing that you carry inside of you, similar to these characters, particularly the Afro-American ones who have been ripped away from their original homes and yet have this connection to the land. Home is this little light that you carry inside you wherever you go.
After a novel as compendiously ambitious as yours, I can imagine you have earned a rest. Are you working on a second novel yet?
I hope to write a second novel but am completely caught up in publicity. It is the first time in my life I’ve had to do anything like this. I have had to relearn to sit still, be quiet – and answer questions.
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is published by Viking (£16.99). To order a copy for £13.93 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
