“What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.” 

Homegoing begins with the stories of two half sisters from Ghana - Effia, who remains in Ghana and is married off to an English governor, and Essi, who is sold into slavery and bound for America. In alternating chapters that follow these women and their descendants, Yaa Gyasi eloquently draws together their two split branches from the same family tree over 7 generations. It is incredible work that clearly communicates the compounding and long lasting effects of slavery (both for those who were taken and those left behind).