Homegoing: from the banalization of memory to an exemplary memory

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which Yaa Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing, imprints an exemplary memory of the history of slavery. The narrative follows seven generations, from the XVIII century to the present, and it constructs an alternative memory of slavery. Gyasi revises the categories of victims and victimizers, problematizes the visibilization of slavery in the USA and Africa, as well as the construction of a memory of this atrocious event in humanity. The novel can be read as a site of memory (Nora) that creates an exemplary memory (Todorov) for the African diaspora in particular, and for the occidental world in general, as it rewrites the history of slavery and completes the interstices emptied by “official history”.