Summary
Children sang and danced with joy at the news: the Asantes had killed Governor Charles MacCarthy and put his head on a stick to show their noncompliance with British authority. James, the son of Quey and Nana Yaa, told the children that the British would come after the Fantes next, but that they were safe because his family is royal. Quey soon approached with a white man and summoned James to come with him. The white man told James that his mother's father has been killed as an act of retribution; the Asantes thought the white people killed their king to get back at them for the death of Governor MacCarthy. Quey told James that his mother wanted to attend the funeral, even though it was highly dangerous. James said that they should go, and his father agreed that it would be a sin not to. James, his mother, and his father set off for Kumasi. Effia, James's grandmother, stayed home with his younger siblings.
On the way to Kumasi, Quey and Nana Yaa bickered. James held a gun and thought about whether his parents cared for each other at all, knowing their marriage was based on politics from the beginning. After a few days of travel, they stopped in a village to stay with a man named David whom Quey had met while studying in England. Nana Yaa immediately went off to sleep, but Quey told James to stay and talk with the men. They talked about Quey's relationship with Nana Yaa and James's future marriage prospects. James thought about Amma Atta, the girl whom Quey and Fiifi had decided James should marry. She was the daughter of Abeeku Badu's successor. They were set to be married when James turned eighteen. However, as they grew up, James had come to be annoyed by Amma Atta. The conversation lapsed and then David brought up the news that the British might be abolishing slavery. Quey was sure that it would not affect their trade, since the British had said similar things before, after which the slave trade had continued on. The British still wanted to own the African people and their land.
The next morning, the three set off again, in somewhat better spirits. They reached Kumasi in the evening and were taken to the king's palace. Nana Yaa's eldest brother Kofi told them that the king had already been buried. Osei Yew was now the king. James noticed that Kofi did not give any attention to Quey. The funeral began the next day; women wailed in the streets, the men wore colors of mourning, and there was drumming and dancing all night. The king's family sat in a line and received people's condolences for hours on end. One girl approached James but would not shake his hand; she told him that she refused to shake the hand of a slaver. James was annoyed at her insolence but undoubtedly attracted and intrigued. When the funeral proceedings ended, James decided to find out who the girl was. He went to his cousin Kwame, who, James remembered, had kept a secret of his when they were young children.
Kwame directed James to where he could find the girl. He came upon her while she was carrying water and offered to help. She did not accept, but she did tell him her name: Akosua Mensah. They walked for ten miles, talking about slavery and war. James eventually asked if she was promised to anyone, and she told him that she was not. James thought of Amma Atta, who was supposed to be his first wife. Then he thought of his grandmother Effia, who cried often; he had once asked her why she was crying and she told him the story of Baaba. James told Akosua that he wanted to marry her. He told her to hide her blood when she first menstruated, promising to come back for her and take her away to somewhere they can live simply together. She told him that she didn't yet trust him, but that she would if he came back for her.
Later that year, James married Amma Atta. However, he never wanted to sleep in her hut. He made excuses, saying that he was ill or embarrassed, but Amma Atta told him he had to go to the apothecary because people would start to wonder why she was not getting pregnant. James agreed to do so, and all the while he remembered his promise to Akosua. He went to see a woman named Mampanyin who was the best apothecary around. She scolded him for not having faith in her, and they argued about slavery. The woman confronted him about the fact that his penis worked fine, and he revealed that he wanted to run away to Asanteland. He told her that he wanted to leave his family without them knowing, so that he would not hurt them. Mampanyin told him that he already knew how to do this. James returned to his wife and lied about what the apothecary told him, biding his time. He felt conflicted for a week, until his grandmother Effia came over for dinner. She asked why he was upset, and he told her that he wasn't sure if he was weak like his mother always called his father. She told him that everyone is weak at first, but they must learn to be themselves. James cried in front of her, and then, the next day, told his family that he was leaving to get a job on Cape Coast.
James got a job working for an old, Scottish doctor on Cape Coast. The doctor told him stories about when his grandmother and grandfather were young; life in Africa had seemed mysterious and exciting to them. Then, one night a month later, the Asante attacked. James told the doctor to run, but he would not. James himself ran, soiling himself in fear and thinking about how the apothecary woman told him he would know what to do when the time came. He woke up in the forest with an Asante warrior standing near him. The man recognized him as a relative of the late king. James asked if anyone knew he was alive and the warrior replied that everyone thought he was dead since an Asante warrior had hit him in the head with a rock. James told the warrior to tell everyone that he died in the attack. James set off on a long journey to Asanteland by foot. After 40 days, he reached Akosua, who was still waiting for him.
Jo was living in Maryland, working on the boats in Fell's Point, specifically a boat called Alice. He had lived there ever since Ma Aku had gotten him out of slavery by crossing the border into the free state. Police often came around the boat, which still made Jo jumpy; on this particular day, he asked his friend Poot to cover for him and set off when he heard the police would be coming. Jo bought some pigs feet and helped a white woman who had almost been trampled by a horse. He continued on to the house where Ma Aku worked because he knew his wife Anna would be helping with the cleaning. Thinking fondly of his young, pregnant wife, he bought a flower on his way. He had never truly experienced the south or slavery; the last name on his papers, like that of many black people who had escaped to the north, was Freeman.
When he arrived, Jo gave his wife the flower, talked with her briefly, and then sent her back inside with a squeeze on the butt. He thought about how it was her butt that first attracted him to her nineteen years before; he had followed her for four blocks. When he caught up to her, they had walked together for a long ways, and he only found out later that she had gotten in trouble for not getting home on time. Ma Aku and Anna worked for a white family called the Mathisons, who liked their large house cleaned spotlessly. Mr. Mathison was an abolitionist, and that day as Jo helped with the cleaning, he heard Mr. Mathison talking with others about emancipation and southern secession. After the cleaning was finally finished, Jo, Ma Aku, and Anna went home to Jo and Anna's children: Agnes, Beulah, Cato, Daly, Eurias, Felicity, and Gracie. They had taken to calling the baby that Anna was currently pregnant with by the letter "H." Jo felt that being a good father was what he owed to his parents, who hadn't gotten to escape slavery with him. Agnes, his first child, was now old enough that she helped Ma Aku and Anna a lot with chores and childcare. After all the children had gone to sleep, Jo told Anna about the police coming around the boat again. Jo and Anna had sex passionately but quietly, as to not wake their children who were separated only by a curtain.
The next day, Jo returned to Alice. He asked about the police coming by, and his friend Poot told him about what happened. Poot was a black man who had been born free in Baltimore, and he was a master with ships. After chatting, Jo got to work spreading hot pitch on the hull of the ship. When he finished that, he saw Anna standing on the dock, which was a rare occurrence. He could see from her demeanor that something was wrong, and she told him that Mr. Mathison said to come to the house. They were both nervous because Mr. Mathison had never asked to see Jo before. When they reached the house, Mr. Mathison welcomed Jo warmly. He told Jo that a new law was being drafted that said law enforcement would be required to send any runaway slave found in the North back down south, no matter how long ago they escaped. He said that Anna and their children would still be safe, but Kojo and Ma Aku would be in danger. He suggested they move the entire family further north to New York or even Canada.
Jo and Anna talked worriedly that night after the children were asleep. They knew that Ma Aku would never want to leave Baltimore. Anna would be safe because she had real free papers; she had been fathered by a slave owner who set her mother and her free when she was young. They heard Beulah, their second child, whimpering and thrashing in her sleep due to night terrors. They decide to keep the family in Baltimore, especially since Anna was so far along in her pregnancy. In the coming days, people continued to whisper about the new law, and some black people started to head north; otherwise, life went on, with Baby H growing bigger and Agnes getting a job and then a fiance. Her fiance's name was Timmy, and they had met through Agnes's job cleaning the Methodist church. They married on the day that the Fugitive Slave Act passed.
A few weeks later, it was reported that a runaway black man named James Hamlet had been arrested in New York City. There were rallies and protests throughout the North, and many white people joined in. Mr. Mathison reminded Jo to always carry his papers, and Jo and Anna started making their children practice how to show their papers to a policeman if they were ever stopped. Anna did not take it as seriously as Jo did, and once even left her papers at home, causing Jo to yell at her until she cried. Then, one day, Anna didn't come home after work. Ma Aku didn't know where she is, nor did the children, so Jo went out to ask anyone who she might have interacted with on her way home. When Jo went to Mr. Mathison, the white man told him to go home and that he would search for her. However, Jo could not stay still, so he went out looking as well. He found out that she left the Mathisons' at 6pm and wasn't seen after. Timmy drew up signs and they showed them throughout town. When Jo came to Alice with the sign, his friend Poot told him that he couldn't miss any more days or he would be fired. Jo did not listen, and he ran up to a white woman to ask if she had seen his wife. The woman was scared of him and a police officer came over. The policeman talked roughly to Jo, threatening to send him back to the south, then sent him away.
Three weeks later, Mr. Mathison brought a little black boy to Jo. The boy said that he saw a white man take a pregnant black woman in his carriage. Jo immediately thought that they had been sold into slavery, though Mr. Mathison says that the man could have been getting her medical help. When he got home, Ma Aku asked in Twi if Anna was gone and Jo nodded. Ma Ako let Jo hug her and cry like when he was a young child. She told him about the strength of his mother, but he told her that he regarded her as his mother.
Ten years passed. Ma Aku died, Agnes and Timmy had three children, Beulah got pregnant, Cato and Daly both married, and Eurias and Gracie found work outside the house. Jo felt that his children could not stand to be around him because he had never been the same after losing his wife; he still saw her everywhere. Jo moved to New York and stopped working on ships even though he had been very skilled. He did whatever work he could get and spent a lot of his time at an all-black bar. One night at the bar, a man started talking about the war coming now that South Carolina had seceded. Both Jo and the bartender did not pay the man much mind, since there had been talk of war for a long time.
Abena was 25 and still unmarried, which in her village was seen as a big problem. Nobody wanted to marry her because they thought her father was unlucky, since his crops never grew. Even her best friend from childhood, Ohene Nyarko, did not want her for a second wife. On this day, Abena was bringing back seeds for her father. When she gave him the seeds, she also asked him if she could go to Kumasi so that she could finally meet people from different villages and see the Asante king's palace. Her father James refused and slapped her face. Abena's mother and father had never let her go far, and they had never given her a good reason. Abena raised her hand to hit her father, but her mother grabbed her arm. Old Man (Abena's name for her father) left the hut. After he left, Abena's mother told her that her father was once related to many Big Men, but he ran away to live his own life, which is why Abena's parents were not welcome in Kumasi. However, Abena's mother told her that she should go. Abena decided that she would go to Kumasi.
In the evening, Abena went to see Ohene Nyarko. Ohene teased her about the fact that they had tried to have sex when they were just children, having learned what to do by watching their parents. She asked him to take her to Kumasi and he laughed at her. He told her that he cannot tend his crops if he goes off to Kumasi, and he cannot marry her if he doesn't have a good yield of yams. Abena started to cry, even though he had been teasing her in a light tone, because she knew he never intended to marry her. Pitying her, Ohene agreed to take her.
When they get to Kumasi, Abena was amazed. Kumasi was large and foreign goods were sold in the middle of town. Abena asked Ohene if they could see the Golden Stool, which was said to hold the soul of the Asante people, so they went to see where it was kept in the palace. As they left the palace, an old man approached Abena and asked if she was the ghost of James.
Abena and Ohene decided to split up for a while. After walking for a while, Abena decided to stop in the shade. A black man who spoke Twi poorly approached her and asked to talk about Christianity. He took her to a clearing where people were setting up tree stumps as stools, and she saw her first white person in the form of a missionary. People called him called abroni, meaning wicked one. Abena ran away from the clearing and found Ohene buying yams. He griped about the Europeans trying to bring their religion to the Asante, and Abena noted that the Asante saw the Fante as having been more sympathetic to foreign influence, especially the British. She thought about a night when her father told her village about the Castle on Cape Coast.
Abena and Ohene traveled back to their village. One night after two weeks of travel, Ohene suggested that they stop to rest, but Abena wanted them to keep going. Ohene jokingly called her his darling, and she asked him not to call her that since he wouldn't marry her. He told her that he would marry her when he had his next big harvest and that she must be patient. After this, they had sex. Afterwards, Abena thought about a time when she spent all day helping her father by carrying water to their crops. When they died the next day, she had cried, but her father told her that instead of regretting she should learn from the experience. Abena decided that she does not regret having sex with Ohene Nyarko.
For the next six years, Abena's village had bad harvests. Some families left the village, but Abena and Ohene's families stayed. Ohene and Abena continued to have sex together, but he still did not marry her because of the bad harvests. People in the village began to say that Abena was a witch. The elders had a meeting and proclaimed that Abena would have to leave the village if she got pregnant before the next good harvest or if the village remained barren for seven years. One day, Abena went to Ohene's compound. She saw he was packing, so she asked him where he was going. He told her that he was going to Osu because someone had a new plant that might grow better in their village. Abena worried that she would be kicked out of the village while he was gone, but he reassured her and they had sex quickly. Abena went home and told her family about the new plant, but they were curt with her because they felt ashamed.
Ohene came back after a week with the new seeds, cocoa. They had been very expensive, but he said that other villages were already seeing huge harvests. When the first crop grew, people were disappointed at first because it seemed that you couldn't eat what they produced. However, when Ohene went to a market to sell the beans, he came back with plenty of goats, palm oil, palm wine, yams, and kola nuts. The village had a huge festival to celebrate. After most of the feasting had finished, Abena went over to Ohene to talk, trying to insinuate that this would be the time to marry her. However, he moved away from her touch and spoke roughly to her. Abena walked home to her hut and lay down clutching her heart and stomach. The next day, the elders came to tell her that she could stay in the village since the years of bad harvest had ended and she hadn't had a child. The elders believed Ohene would now marry her and everything would be right. When Abena told them that Ohene still wouldn't marry her, the elders were confused. When they went to Ohene's hut, he told them it was true; as part of his trade for the cocoa beans he had promised to marry another woman, and he would need to pay her bride price.
Abena decided she needed to leave the village. Her father seemed like he might try to stop her, but instead he dug up the stone from Abena's great-great-grandmother Effia. James told Abena that he was ashamed that his father was a slaver, so he left Fanteland. Even though he had been unlucky in his harvests, he felt lucky to do work that was less shameful. He told Abena that she could leave, but that she should take the stone with her. Abena hugged her father and her mother and then set out for the missionary church in Kumasi.
Analysis
Womanhood is one of the major themes in Homegoing, and this is especially clear in Abena's chapter. Though three generations have already passed, Abena's identity still depends on whether a high-status man from her village will be willing to marry her. Taking sexual control of her own body is not only taboo, but has legal consequences. A parallel in Abena's experience and the experience of Effia comes from having to hide her menstruation. Doing so seems to have been one of the only ways to have control in a system where sexually mature women are treated like objects to be traded for political or financial gain.
The alphabetic names of Kojo and Anna's child might seem to be merely light comedy, but they hold a certain amount of symbolism. Until Kojo, all of the main characters have had only one child. This was not usual for families in Africa, nor necessarily usual for slaves, but one child seemed to be the most any of the main characters before Kojo could support. Since Kojo grows up largely as a free man, learning a trade and living simply, he and his wife have the stability to have a big family. Naming their children after letters from the alphabet suggests that they might have happily continued on to 26 children if Anna had not been taken. After that point in Kojo's chapter, the abrupt stop at the letter G emphasizes the incompleteness of the family.
Kojo, James, and Abena's names are interesting in their own rights. James and Abena are part of the same family line descended from Effia. While Quey's name is not discussed, it undoubtedly helps him fit in to Akan culture when he is called upon by the British to handle trade negotiations. It is unclear why Quey names his own son James, the name of his father, with whom Quey did not have a particularly strong relationship. Perhaps it was to emphasize James's power as the descendant of both the Asante king and a British man. When James leaves his arranged marriage to marry for love, he leaves behind his name, leading people in his new village to call him "the man without a name" (p.144) and simply "Unlucky" (p.144). Without a Western name, nobody ever suspects that James is anything but Akan, and the name he chooses to give his daughter is notably not Western either. Kojo's name has a similar symbolism; he is given a traditional Akan name by his parents, both of whom were born in Africa, but since he grows up without a strong connection to them or their culture, he goes by a Westernized version of the name—Jo—and gives his children Western names.
Similar to the choices in giving Akan or Western names, characters make choices in deciding which language to teach their children. We know from James's chapter that he was fluent in English, and even studied in England. However, to keep up the facade of being a simple father, he does not teach Abena English. While this decision is fairly simple to understand, Kojo's decision not to speak Twi with his children is more complex. Kojo clearly speaks Twi, since he and Ma Aku use it to communicate without the children understanding. While Kojo's mother and grandmother were scolded and beaten for speaking Twi while working on plantations, Kojo lives as a free man, so he should have no fear of physical punishment. His choice not to speak Twi with his children shows the weakening of his family line's connection to Africa and the way African-Americans had to give up their culture to blend into Western society.
The introduction of cocoa in Abena's chapter helps the reader to pinpoint modern day Ghana as the region where Effia, Esi, and Effia's descendants live. Ghana began to export cocoa at the end of the 19th century, and throughout the 20th century it was the world's leading producer of the crop. Even today, between 1 and 2 million people in the country are involved in the growth of cocoa. Since cocoa is a new crop at the end of Abena's chapter, the reader can track the time frame of the story as the next chapters move into the early 20th century.
