HOMEGOING:
FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES
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READING SCHEDULE |
CAPE COAST CASTLE |
RECOMMENDED READING
TITLE: Transcendent Kingdom
AUTHOR: Yaa Gyasi SUMMARY: A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice. WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Download the audiobook or ebook from OverDrive |
TITLE: Libertie
AUTHOR: Kaitlyn Greenidge SUMMARY:Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie will go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie feels stifled by her mother's choices and is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother, Libertie has skin that is too dark. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it-for herself and for generations to come. WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Download the audiobook from Hoopla or the ebook from OverDrive |
TITLE: The Vanishing Half
AUTHOR: Brit Bennett SUMMARY: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Check out the book from NC's library or download the audiobook or ebook from OverDrive |
TITLE: Americanah
AUTHOR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie SUMMARY: Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Check out the book from NC's library or download the audiobook or ebook from OverDrive |
TITLE: The Nickel Boys
AUTHOR: Colson Whitehead SUMMARY: Follows the harrowing experiences of two African-American teens at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Check out the book from NC's library or download the audiobook or ebook from OverDrive |
TITLE: Washington Black
AUTHOR: Esi Edugyan SUMMARY: Unexpectedly chosen to be a family manservant, an eleven-year-old Barbados sugar-plantation slave is initiated into a world of scientific inquiry and dignity before a devastating betrayal propels him throughout the world in search of his true self. WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK: Check out the book from NC's library or download the audiobook or ebook from OverDrive |
GO DEEPER
Homegoing Discussion Guide
- VIDEO: An Interview with Yaa Gyasi, the Author of Homegoing
- VIDEO: Watch a Group of Black Teens Tour Cape Coast Castle
- VIDEO: Conan O'Brien and Sam Richardson in Ghana
- ARTICLE: Cape Coast Castle Overview
- VIDEO: Cape Coast Castle - From Gold Trade to Slave Trade
- PODCAST: 1619 from the New York Times
- ARTICLE: The Legacy of Trauma
- PODCAST: Code Switch from NPR
- EPISODE: What We Inherit: "On this episode, the story of one family's struggle to end a toxic cycle of inter-generational trauma from forced assimilation."
- PODCAST EPISODE: The Least You Could Do from Reply All: "Black people all across the US are receiving the world's weirdest form of reparations: Venmo payments from white people. Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates."
- DOCUMENTARY: 13th on Netflix (Netflix has also uploaded the film on YouTube)
- View the trailer here
- VIDEO: Experts Explain the Slavery Loophole in the 13th Amendment