effia and esi

The first main character introduced in the novel. Effia is born in Fanteland and raised by her father, and a step-mother who beats her. Effia marries a white man named James and moves to the Castle. She is the mother of Quey. Esi is half-sister of Effia, raised by Maame and Big Man in Asanteland. She is taken as a slave, lives in the dungeons of the Cape Coast Castle for some time, and is sent to the United States on a slave ship.

Both of Maame's daughters' lives are affected by being women, which allows them to be controlled by men. Esi is captured by white and African men, put in a dungeon with other women waiting to be sold into slavery, raped, and sent to the United States against her will. Her female descendants must deal with forced marriage, absent fathers, and difficulty finding jobs due largely to their gender. Effia, Maame's other daughter, is married to a white man because of the money it will bring her family; even if she hadn't been married to a white man, she would have become one of the wives of a man from her tribe and spent her days cooking and raising children. Her female descendants, who live in Africa from the 18th through 20th centuries, depend on marriage and motherhood to shape their lives. Even Marjorie, the last descendant in Effia's lineage, is respected by her teachers but not by many of her peers in school because of the intersection of her race and gender.