Homegoing Yaw Summary & Analysis

Yaw

Summary: Yaw

While working on his book about African independence, Yaw, a history teacher, thinks back to having dinner with his friend Edward and his wife. Edward encouraged Yaw to go to America to learn about revolution, though Yaw retorted that white people only teach what they want others to learn. As Yaw left Edward’s house, he passed a group of boys playing soccer. Yaw caught the ball as it flew off the field, though the boy he returned it to appeared horrified by Yaw’s face.

On the first day of school, Yaw introduces his class to the idea that “History is Storytelling” and asks the boys to share stories they’ve heard about how Yaw got the scars on his face. One boy answers that they can never know because they were not there. Yaw confirms this, saying that history is only passed down through the words of others. Often, the stories of people in power are the only ones that people hear. A student points out that Yaw did not say how he got his scar. Yaw says that as he was only a baby when he got it and he only knows what he’s heard. Yaw was sent to school with the money collected by the village and didn’t know his parents. His mother, Akua, is still alive and has sent letters begging to see Yaw, though he has never responded.

Yaw hires a house girl named Esther. After five years, Yaw realizes he’s in love with her. Yaw asks Esther to accompany him to visit his mother, where they have a tearful reunion. Akua explains that she had dreams of a woman made of fire. Even after she set the hut on fire, her dreams did not stop. Akua went back to the missionary school, where she found the one thing of her mother’s the missionary did not burn: the black stone necklace. She brought the necklace to a fetish man, who explained there was evil in her lineage and that the black stone belonged to an ancestor who was the fire woman visiting her. Akua came to realize that “evil begets evil” until you cannot see where one evil stops and another starts. She apologizes to Yaw, who forgives her.

Analysis: Yaw

Yaw is the first descendant of Effia who shows the physical manifestations of his family’s trauma in his scars. This symbol has been present on Esi’s side in Ness and H. Like them, Yaw received his scars through no fault of his own. Yet unlike Ness and H, Yaw received them from someone who did not intentionally hurt him: his mother. While Ness and H got their scars from the horrors of slavery and its aftermath, Yaw got his scars as a reminder of his family’s contributions to slavery. Yaw is forced to wear this reminder on his face every day. For much of his life, Yaw avoids confronting how he got the scars. However, they remain part of his identity and are closely tied to his family’s heritage. Eventually, Yaw is able to use his pain to explore the past and see how he can learn from it to create a better future for himself and for Africa.

Yaw’s story explores how history is related to storytelling. As a history teacher, Yaw understands that history can never be told without bias. Whoever has power is often the one who tells the story, which leaves out the perspective of the people who were oppressed. Yaw rejects going to America for this reason, as he does not want to learn about the past from the people who have so profited off the kidnapping and selling of African people. Yaw applies this theory to his own life as well, as he cannot profess to know what happened to cause his scars when he himself does not even remember the event. However, this is what ultimately inspires Yaw to visit his mother, Akua, as his mother is the only person who actually knows what happened.

Yaw feels resentment toward his mother for most of his life, as he has internalized the story he has heard from others, that Akua is a “Crazy Woman” who tried to kill her children. Once Yaw visits his mother, however, he learns that her setting the hut on fire was not a conscious attempt to hurt him or a random act of violence. Rather, Akua was trapped in a cycle of evil, her ancestors’ complicity in the slave trade. Just as Yaw has taught his history students, hearing this story from the one person who was there helps him understand what truly happened. This allows Yaw to finally forgive Akua and feel at peace with himself.

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