Volver a casa - BokDraken

Paperback

På Spanish

Publicerades 8 mars 2017 av Salamandra.

ISBN:: 978-84-9838-797-1
OCLC-nummer:: 1011606325

Primera novela de la escritora estadounidense de origen ghanés Yaa Gyasi, la trama de esta cautivante historia de hondo calado humano se desarrolla en la costa suroccidental de África —la actual República de Ghana— y en Norteamérica desde el siglo XVIII hasta el presente. Hijas de una misma madre y de padres pertenecientes a dos etnias distintas, Effia y Esi son dos hermanas de sangre que nunca llegarán a conocerse. Sus caminos están irremediablemente destinados a separarse: así, mientras Effia es obligada a casarse con un gobernador inglés y a residir en una fortaleza junto a la costa, Esi es capturada y enviada como esclava al sur de Estados Unidos. La narración va trazando, pues, el devenir de las dos ramas de la familia, protagonistas de conmovedoras historias de aflicción, esperanza y superación en el marco de una serie de relevantes acontecimientos históricos: las guerras tribales, el negocio del cacao, …

Primera novela de la escritora estadounidense de origen ghanés Yaa Gyasi, la trama de esta cautivante historia de hondo calado humano se desarrolla en la costa suroccidental de África —la actual República de Ghana— y en Norteamérica desde el siglo XVIII hasta el presente. Hijas de una misma madre y de padres pertenecientes a dos etnias distintas, Effia y Esi son dos hermanas de sangre que nunca llegarán a conocerse. Sus caminos están irremediablemente destinados a separarse: así, mientras Effia es obligada a casarse con un gobernador inglés y a residir en una fortaleza junto a la costa, Esi es capturada y enviada como esclava al sur de Estados Unidos. La narración va trazando, pues, el devenir de las dos ramas de la familia, protagonistas de conmovedoras historias de aflicción, esperanza y superación en el marco de una serie de relevantes acontecimientos históricos: las guerras tribales, el negocio del cacao, la llegada de los misioneros, la Ley de Esclavos Fugitivos de 1850, la Gran Migración Negra, la lucha por los derechos civiles y el renacimiento de Harlem en los años veinte, hasta llegar a la epidemia de heroína de los setenta.

Recibida con entusiasmo desbordante en Norteamérica, Inglaterra y Francia, la crítica especializada de ambos lados del Atlántico celebró la llegada de una voz nueva, límpida y potente, dotada de un especial talento para acercar al lector el microcosmos de los sentimientos más íntimos del individuo en su desigual lucha ante la aplastante fuerza de la Historia. Una lectura apasionante, diríamos irrenunciable, que sirve de carta de presentación de una nueva generación de autores de origen africano que, sin duda, dejada huella en la literatura de este siglo.

Source: salamandra.info/libro/volver-casa

28 utgåvor

Björn recenserade Homegoing av Yaa Gyasi

None

4 stjärnor

Homegoing is an excellent and sometimes frustrating novel partly because of what it doesn't do. A story of two branches of the same family that are split apart in the early 1700s when one half-sister becomes a white man's filly and the other gets shipped off as a slave, it's not generally interested in cheap payoffs. Characters get to occupy centre stage for a few pages, then disappear into the fog of history - often violently, and often with little other trace than the blood and the stories they pass on to their children. Instead of telling one person's story, Gyasi uses all those people to tell a larger story of oppression that seems less systematic than cancerous, feeding on itself without even thinking about it, whereas its victims can't not have to constantly try to live with it.

When someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether …

Homegoing is an excellent and sometimes frustrating novel partly because of what it doesn't do. A story of two branches of the same family that are split apart in the early 1700s when one half-sister becomes a white man's filly and the other gets shipped off as a slave, it's not generally interested in cheap payoffs. Characters get to occupy centre stage for a few pages, then disappear into the fog of history - often violently, and often with little other trace than the blood and the stories they pass on to their children. Instead of telling one person's story, Gyasi uses all those people to tell a larger story of oppression that seems less systematic than cancerous, feeding on itself without even thinking about it, whereas its victims can't not have to constantly try to live with it.

When someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest back in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. But still, Yaw, you have to let yourself be free.

Yeah, there are things about this that feel a little too much like the product of creative writing courses. But there's enough ice-cold anger and compassion with those who were silenced, and a very keen sense of how to recreate history with a few sharp details, to make it work.

This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on.