Yaa Gyasi · 2016 · global

Yaa Gyasi's 2016 debut traces two branches of one family across three hundred years, from a single fire in eighteenth-century Ghana. One half-sister marries the British governor of Cape Coast Castle; the other is sold into slavery from its dungeon. This route follows the second line and the family's eventual return: the Middle Passage, the plantations of the South, the convict-lease coal mines of Alabama, the Harlem of the Great Migration, and, generations later, a descendant walking back through the Door of No Return. The Ghanaian line, meanwhile, endures the Asante wars and British colonisation at home.

1. 1
   Kumasi

   Two half-sisters are born in the kingdoms of the Gold Coast; one is taken in an Asante raid.

2. 2
   Cape Coast Castle

   One sister marries the British slaver who governs Cape Coast Castle; the other is sold from the dungeon beneath his feet, out through the Door of No Return.

3. 3
   The American South

   The Middle Passage delivers her line into slavery in the American South.

4. 4
   Pratt City

   Through the Civil War and into the convict-lease coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, where a man shovels coal for two.

5. 5
   Harlem

   And north in the Great Migration, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of Harlem.

6. 6
   Cape Coast

   Seven generations on, a descendant returns to the castle, the Door of No Return, and the sea: the homegoing.