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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Homegoing’s most daring stylistic choice also happens to form its backbone. Beginning with two half-sisters and descending the family tree, the novel organizes itself into chapters that are each told from the perspective of a different family member. These stories read less like primary plotlines than episodes of lineage, parts of a far greater narrative that breathes, blends, and unfolds. The novel alternates from Effia’s descendants to Esi’s, braiding one lineage’s fate with the other’s; through interlocking narratives, it assembles a cast of characters.
The wide-ranging perspectives—pulled from different time periods—make for an equally diverse pool of narratives, even if they come from within a single family. The concerns of matriarchs who navigated the politics of Fante slave trading won’t have much in common with those who walk down New York City’s Amsterdam Avenue. Accordingly, the novel fits its prose to the various perspectives of its characters. Effia’s chapter begins with a rippling, human-like fire and strange premonitions—her father frets over family misfortunes while her stepmother brands her a “demon.” By the time Ness steps onto Allan Stockham’s farm, “even the Northern Star was a hoax.” The style shifts across different registers as it does through time, turning from mystical to gritty, fantastical to realist.
The moments of poetry remain unchanged, though. Homegoing’s vivid imagination and attentiveness to detail connect the stories together. At one point, Akosua speaks as though to an old woman whose memories “had turned into butterflies and flown away, never to return.” Her grandniece stares at her lover's eyes, which look like the “shimmering body of a golden ant she had once seen carrying a blade of grass across a hill.” However distant or far-flung, the novel’s separate narratives share a search for beauty.
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