Reading Homegoing is like eating at a Chinese banquet with 14 courses but each course could fill you up by by itself. And yet at the end, you feel completely satisfied, emotionally and intellectually enriched with what the black/negro human race went through last two hundred and fifty years or so. It’s like the modern version of “Roots” the movie and yet seem more realistic and multi-faceted like video recording the progressive scenes in many angles. The author captures the emotions with good usages of metaphors and descriptions, which in turn moves the readers in profound ways. Each of chapters or stories constitutes one episode of a series of 14 episodes. I can’t wait to see someone make them into a TV series.

The stories are hard to follow in the beginning as they happened about two hundred years ago and alternated between two genealogies, Effia and Esi the two half sisters, for which a genealogy chart on the first page comes in handy to reference occasionally during my reading book and listening to the audiobook. The audiobook narrated by Dominic Hoffman is fantastic with his slight African accent that seem to take on each character with fidelity.

I don’t usually read novels but this novel is a real treat even if you’re just remotely interested in the history of the negro race because in many ways they are stories of the underprivileged to nth degree. If the book doesn’t move you, then you’re either too stone-hearted to be in a human race or too numbed to feel the pain. To the most of us, I highly recommend this book.

Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you plan to read this book.
My key take-aways:
– The horrific condition of stacking hundreds of captured women slaves in the dungeon underneath the castle seem unbelievable. But it’s not surprising given the cruelty of slavery in itself.
– In fact, the slavery was already a common practice among the African tribes before the Whites started taking the black slavery and perhaps among the different white ethnics speak to the degree of cruelty the humans are capable of imposing. The roles of the black themselves contributing to the slavery was also explicit.
– During the Civil War, the awkward status of the blacks between the slave states and free states were captured in the book. Any black person can be kidnapped to be a slave in the southern slave states seem incredible to me. But that happened often as highlighted in two-shovel H’s story, who was falsely imprisoned in Pratt City, Alabama and turned into slaves digging in coal mines.
– Sometimes the betrayal of someone you love hurts no less than the hurt from the whites as in the case of Robert, the mostly white husband, to Willie, a religious, self-determined daughter of H.
– The underprivileged tend to be in a constant state of helplessness and get trapped in the drug abuse as in Sonny’s story. He could blame on abandonment of his father. But through the love and care of his mother, Willie and his son, Marcus, Sonny eventually won over drug abuse though precariously.
– Akua, the crazy woman, burned down her family hut because of her hallucination about this fire woman. Two of her children were burned to death and she was exiled out of the village after her husband, Asamoah the handicapped warrior stood out for her to save her life. Her son, Yaw, was sent to a remote place for schooling and came back to reunite with her after being a history teacher at his middle age. This story is a bit mystical but still believable.
– Yaw’s line of genealogy stayed in Ghana, Africa until he emigrated to Africa so you get a feel for what’s happening in Africa struggling for independence from England, while the other genealogy had descended from the slaves kidnapped to America struggling against injustice. The contrast between the two is interesting.
– I knew from the chart that there are two genealogies that will come together at the end. This kept me anxious to how the book will end. And I was not disappointed. The fear of fire and the fear of the water come together so beautifully at the end is a master piece.

Once again, the book offers a full course of history, vile human natures, and hope. And I am hopeful for the future of human race.

A few interesting youtube videos with the author Yaa Gyasi:

Giulia Enders, the author of this book Gut, really spilled out her gut about our gut, which by her words was the most underrated organ in human bodies. And if you read this book like I did, you’ll agree.

I learned many things about our gut or gastrointestinal systems. For examples,
– Pooing involves quite a few plumbing and process steps; the coordination between the inner sphincter and outer sphincter (the anus) is quite an amazing feat. The book also has a chapter on feces – shapes, types and colors. Everything you want to know about it.
– The two little bumps on the cheeks and two below your tongue secrete saliva to digest the food. The saliva contains pain killer that may explain why we get comforted or analgesic effect when we chew gum or anything at all.
– Bad breath is often caused by tonsil stone.
– The shape of the stomach is such that the food can go down smoothly without backing up when we laugh or talk and liquid food can get out to the small intestine on fast track. But as a result it traps gas that we need to burp out.
– The surface area, especially the small intestine, is roughly 100 times larger than our skin. This is so we can absorb every bit of the nutrients.
– Cooking breaks down or “unfold” the protein to save our stomach from doing the work.
– Our appendix provides immunity cells to fight bad bacteria and also store good bacteria.Of course, it often become a victim of infection that resulted in appendicitis.
– Medicine can take effect faster when absorbed through the last few inches of our large intestine (colon) through the use of the suppository because it won’t go through liver to get filtered out.
– Fat goes through the lymphatic vessels straight to the heart before gets pumped into the blood before getting to liver to be absorbed. This is why eating “good” fat like extra virgin olive oil helps to reduce blood vessel clotting.
– Don’t use olive oil on frying pan as the heat may alter its fine characteristics. Use butter or coconut oil instead because they are most stable under heat despite its saturated fat.
– Soy and quinoa are two plants that contain complete amino acid.
– There are two nervous systems: one controlled by our brain and the other of the gut that control the “smooth” muscle system without our knowing it. Reflux is a symptom of the two nervous systems stumbles upon each other.
– Vomiting is an act that takes coordination of all the organs within our gut in reverse order. Not many animals are capable of vomiting. It’s one of our survival advantage.
– Extra risk taking behavior could be attributed to a certain bacteria in our gut. This could be a frontier for the insurance industry and privacy issue.
– The gut receives a lot of sensor information and provides us the “big picture,” hence playing a huge role in how we perceive the world through insula- sometimes more so than our brain. Also, it plays a huge role in how we feel emotionally.
– Part III covers the microbes in our gut system. There is a lot of information. But it boils down to good and bad bacteria. Good bacteria help us digest the food and convert to vitamins and keep the bad bacteria at bay. The bad bacteria made us sick but it also train our body to come up with a defense mechanism – the immunity cells.
– The book was written in humorous ways especially the illustrations by her sister.

There are three parts to this book:
1) Gut Feeling, where she covers an overview of the gut system and quickly discussed how things go in, and come out and what happen in between.
2) The nervous system of the gut: the amazing orchestration between the gut, the brain and the rest of the human organs.
3) The world of the microbes: the microbes play huge roles in human’s absorption of nutrients and immunity system. Many of the causes and effects are still unknown and under research.

Though the author is German, the book is well written in English and with good humor and great illustration from her sister. I highly recommend this book.