She was also surprised to learn that not all African women who lived in the castle in the eighteenth century were slaves: some were married to British officers stationed there. It was a place that Gyasi’s family never mentioned despite its proximity to the town from which her mother came. One of the places she visited was Cape Coast Castle, the site of a slave port that held captured Africans before they were shipped to the Americas. It was only her second time visiting the country since she left as a toddler. The idea for Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing(2016) came during the summer of her sophomore year at Stanford, when she went to Ghana on a writing fellowship. She studied English at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the prestigious writing program at the University of Iowa. After discovering the writings of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison as a teenager, Gyasi decided that she wanted to pursue writing as a career. As a girl, Gyasi was a voracious reader, and soon began to write her own stories. After moving around, the family finally settled when her father got a tenure-track position at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, and came to the United States in the early 1990s at age two with her family to join her father, who was finishing his PhD in French at Ohio State University. Kenosha has shown up to these conversations open to learning, willing to share from their own experiences, and doing what I believe our great city does best, prepared to learn from each other to build a better community.” “Community members have explored some difficult topics in this session of the NEA Big Read, including grief and the inequalities we currently see in our communities due to historical systems of oppression whose aftermath we still experience today.

“‘Homegoing’ is a beautiful work of fiction that reflects on our shared history - and not just the parts that make are comfortable to talk about. “Perhaps what has excited me most about this year’s efforts is how thoughtful our participants have been,” Cummings said. This year’s NEA Big Read programming brought 26 unique opportunities for community members to discuss, explore, and dive deeper into themes from Gyasi’s debut novel. Once again, Kenosha has made this community effort a great success.” “The community response to the 2023 NEA Big Read has been monumental,” said Brandi Cummings, Kenosha Public Library’s Head of Community Programs and Partnerships, “I have heard feedback from participants in each program sharing praise for our presenters, range of topics, and quality of events. Registration is required for the virtual event at /yaa.

Homecoming yaa gyasi