Book Review: legal issues raised by Yaa Gyasi’s ‘Homegoing’

Yaa Gyasi’s ‘Homegoing’ speaks to many things; one of such is slavery. It describes a history of crimes, which some people have often regarded as one of those ‘Crimes Against Humanity.

Article 7 of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court said it means murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, grave forms of sexual violence, imprisonment, persecution, and other inhuman acts committed as part of a systematic attack on any civilian population.

Considering that the book depicts the events of the 18th and 19th centuries, to which some scholars have associated the term with slavery and the slave trade, then, the assertion certainly raises legal questions even today of crimes committed against people of African descent.

With very compelling events of history, from Ghana and America, it tells a story about two-generation of sisters; Effia and Esi.

One generation lives in Ghana, experiencing colonisation, resistance, and finally the independence of their own home.

The other is dealt by the atrocious commodification of Africans, the Alabama legal segregation (Jim Crow), a Fugitive Slave Act, and freedom that still felt like mere chance.

The narrative starts with an illustration of a family tree.

Each chapter is narrated from the perspective of a decendant of either Effia or Esi.

Since Effia is married off to British Governor James Collins, their son Quey is made to continue in the same stead of the slave business.

When the hunger for humans exceeded the supply from war, coastal warriors started advancing into the forests to kidnap villagers from their huts.

“Northerners, who were frequently captured could have as many as 20 scars on their faces, making them too ugly to sell.”

The native people began calling the Whiteman ‘abroni’, which means wicked one – a term which has been eroded today as ‘obroni’ to mean Whiteman.

The author also draws out times in history when the Ashantis, as resistant as a people, fought the British. Stories of the golden stool, the exile of King Prempeh I, and the Edweso Queen mother, Yaa Asantewaa.

Much of these precedents are true of Ghana’s history and have come to be some of those important moments that gradually led to Ghana’s independence.

One of Effia’s descendants, Yaw, a history teacher during the fresh years for the clamour for ‘self-government’ once said to his students, “history is storytelling. We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”

The American chapters are full of gruesome whippings, torture, Jim Crow, and civil rights liberties which didn’t guarantee freedom.

It was either of picking cotton ‘under the punishing eye’ of Alabama’s sun, of five minutes breaks every three hours of work, of being classed third-class human being, of being whipped for not reaching the ten-ton quota in the coal mines, or being sold by the State of Alabama to work in the mines even when you have proof that you are a free Blackman.

Before the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60’s, the state of Alabama had legal and social systems of separating citizens on the basis of race.

These were legal establishments based on white supremacy or otherwise known as Jim Crow laws.

Black people for instance sat at the back in public buses, went to separate schools and health centers.

The laws came to dominate every aspect of black people’s lives, creating what historian Douglas Blackmon has called ‘slavery by another name.’

These laws, in no doubt, served the interests of a particular group – white supremacists.

The time of the novel’s debut is quite interesting. It was published in 2016, around the same year President Donald Trump was elected into office. Not to play American politics, but Trump enjoyed massive votes from followers, some of whom are white supremacists. His election therefore increased concerns over the place of minorities, (especially African Americans) in the US. 

Gyasi’s accuracy in these chapters demonstrates good research.

It also raises legal questions even today about the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in pursuing issues regarded as ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’ Currently, while genocide and war crimes are specifically regulated by conventions, crimes against humanity lack an international convention of the same rank. 

It also raises questions of whether African nations deserve reparative justice for slavery despite knowing that some of the African people were complicit in the trans-Atlantic slave business.

The book is also reflective of today’s struggle for racial justice in the US amidst BlackLives Matter demonstrations.