The Black Stones (Symbol)
Maame gives each of her daughters, Esi and Effia, a black stone. Though these daughters never meet, the stones connect their stories. Effia's stone is passed down through the family all the way to Marjorie, the last descendant of Effia in the book. Esi's stone, in contrast, is left behind in the dungeon at Cape Coast Castle. Perhaps it could be said that Marcus, Esi's final descendant in the book, connects with the stone again when he visits the Cape Coast Castle as a young adult.
The stone itself symbolizes many important themes of Homegoing. The stone is a dark black, and in the story, many characters are judged for their skin color, not only by white people but also by black people who have lighter or darker skin than them. A stone also has little value in itself, so the preciousness comes only from its connection to family and history. In some African cultures, stones were even believed to carry the spirit of ancestors, which goes along with the theme of cultural heritage passed down through family.`
Fire (Motif)
Fire is the motif that links people in Effia's lineage. This motif begins when Maame sets the fire that allows her to escape the place where she lived in captivity. She leaves behind her daughter Effia, and some believe that she also curses her daughter by doing this. Whether or not it can be considered a curse, fire plays an important factor in lives of Effia's descendants, especially Akua, Yaw, and Marjorie. In Akua's chapter, the young woman cannot get adequate sleep because of the dreams she has of a woman made of fire holding two babies. Eventually, Akua is driven crazy by sleep deprivation and burns her family's hut while she is sleeping. This kills her two daughters, permanently scars her son Yaw, and injures Akua as well. Yaw's life is clearly affected by fire; he cannot find a girlfriend or a wife for much of his life because most people are scared of his scarred face. However, interestingly, his daughter seems more afraid of fire than her father ever was. Perhaps because Marjorie has a stronger relationship with her grandmother Akua than Yaw had with his own mother, Marjorie does not truly confront her fear of water until she returns to Ghana with Marcus; going back to Ghana together connects Maame's split family lines and enables Marjorie and Marcus to face their inherited aversions.
Singing (Motif)
Music, especially singing, is an important part of many cultures, and it is a useful way to track cultural heritage and transmission. Furthermore, family connections can be traced through singing abilities. There are characters on both Effia and Esi's sides of the family that have special places in their communities because of singing. Two of these characters are Willie and Akua.
Willie's singing voice is discovered when she is young, and she is praised for singing the national anthem at her father's coal union meetings. She wants to become a jazz singer in New York City, but she is told that her skin is too dark to sing at the jazz club she wants to. Later, her son gets romantically involved with a woman who sings at the same jazz club after being entranced by her voice and style. Thus, Willie's singing connects two important moments in African-American history and shows the kind of discrimination black women continued to face when trying to get a job, even in the North and long after the abolition of slavery.
Akua is also acknowledged as having an especially good singing voice, though it is not as integral to her chapter. She leads the women in song while the men of their village are fighting in a war, and her daughters sing along loudly, underscoring the way singing can connect a family. Akua and Willie are the same generation in the two family lines, so their singing voices show the continued connection of extended family members even as they grow father apart in family history and lived experience.
Eye Color (Motif)
Eye color is a common motif in stories about race in the United States; The Bluest Eye, the first novel by award-winning African-American author Toni Morrison, centers around a black girl living in Depression-era Ohio who develops an intense jealousy of blue eyes. Light colored eyes are mostly seen on people with white or lighter complexions. In Homegoing, two of the most important examples of eye color, particularly light eye color, being noticed are in the chapters on Willie and Marjorie. Willie and Marjorie are both descendants of Maame living in 20th century America. Esi's first husband is a black man with light colored skin and eyes; this is eventually the factor that tears their marriage and family apart. Marjorie's experience with eye color also has to do with romance; her romantic interest, a white, German boy named Graham, notably has light-colored eyes. Upon meeting Graham for the first time, Marjorie thinks, "With blond hair and blue eyes, he looked like a little boy she’d seen in a Cheerios commercial once" (p285), showing how Marjorie's perception of light colored eyes is linked to American media ideals. Later Gyasi writes that "Marjorie had become more and more enamored with the blue of his eyes. She wrote poems about them." (p289). Marjorie and Graham seem headed for a romantic relationship, but their races keep them apart, even ending their friendship, paralleling Willie's experience.
Peeing Out of Fear (Motif)
A small motif in Homegoing is young people peeing out of fear. From the smell of the Cape Coast Castle dungeon to tales of first menstruation, Gyasi does not shy away from describing bodily functions. In H's chapter, Gyasi writes, "He saw a boy no older than twelve, shivering in the corner of the train. When they’d pushed that boy in front of the pit boss, he’d peed himself, tears running down his face all the while, until he looked like he himself would melt down into the puddle of wet at his feet. The boy was so young, he’d probably never seen a whip like the one the pit boss had laid out on his desk..." (p170). Peeing without meaning to reveals a significant amount of fear, and highlights the youth of the person in question. In this quote, Gyasi uses this bodily function to highlight the brutal fact of the prison labor forced on black men, even the young and weak. This moment becomes a motif when peeing in one's pants is referenced again in Marcus's chapter, the last in the book. Marcus is H's great-grandson, and is actually particularly interested in this relative's life, putting it at the center of his graduate studies. In a brief flashback, Marcus describes how he peed in his pants when he was lost at a museum as a child. That such a minor incident scared Marcus as a child puts his life and struggles in perspective with the rest of the book's characters's experiences.
