Homegoing H Summary & Analysis

Part Two

H

Summary: H

H is arrested and thrown in jail for allegedly looking at a white woman, though he knows this is a false charge. His cellmate reminds H that, though the Civil War ended years ago, slavery still persists in other ways. H is unable to afford the ten-dollar jail fine, as he has saved five dollars in ten years of sharecropping, and so is sent to work in the coal mines in Birmingham, Alabama. There, H and the other prisoners must shovel twelve tons of coal each day, facing injury or death if they don’t meet that quota. At night, H thinks of the brief time when he was free and of his wife Ethe, who left him after he called her by another woman’s name. While most of the other convicts are Black, occasionally a white man is brought in who first thinks he is better than the Black men and then relies on their help. One white man H partners with, Thomas, is unable to lift a shovel of coal, so H uses both of his hands to fill his and Thomas’s quotas. When Thomas thanks him, he asks about H’s name, and H explains that his mother refused to give him a proper name before killing herself.

H is released from the mines in 1889. He first stops at a bar for a drink, though he is judged when people recognize him as a convict from his whip scars. H moves to Pratt City, a town consisting of white and Black former convicts. There, he finds his friend Joecy from the mines, living with his wife and children. Joecy offers to have his son write to Ethe on H’s behalf, but H refuses. H gets a job working in a mine and builds his own house on Joecy’s plot of land. Joecy convinces H to join the union, where H argues for more money. Aware of his own mortality due to diseases men get from working in the mines, H has Joecy’s son write a letter to Ethe telling her where he is.

At the next union meeting, the white and Black workers agree to strike, demanding more pay and better conditions. When the bosses refuse to agree to the union’s terms, they bring in a group of Black teenage convicts. When one boy breaks off while waiting for the shaft, he is shot, and the strikers swarm the white bosses. After six months of the workers striking, the bosses give in and agree to a raise of fifty cents. H returns to his house to find Ethe. She explains that all she has left of her family is the name given to her by her mother, and it pained her when H called her by another woman’s name. Ethe didn’t know how to forgive him until hearing that he was in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. H embraces her as she cleans a pot.

Analysis: H

H’s story reveals that slavery still has a strong hold in the American South even years after it has been abolished. Before H is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, he could only earn meager wages by sharecropping, not enough to allow him to make a better life for himself. And then, H is thrown in jail on a whim for a racism-based crime that cannot be proven. Rather than have enslaved people work in the fields, this new system uses the slave labor of prisoners, doing grueling work that can seriously injure or kill them. H later realizes that these charges are made up so that the mine bosses can bring in free labor instead of raising the wages for workers. The white bosses’ resistance to fair pay and better conditions even results in the death of a young Black man, showing just how much the white bosses value wealth over Black lives. Even after H’s term is up, he is viewed as being beneath the other Black people. Like his grandmother Ness, he is marked by scars that set him apart, making it impossible for him to reintegrate into life as a free man.

However, H has no knowledge of his grandmother or anything about his family beyond the letter his mother gave him as a name before killing herself. Without any knowledge of his ancestry or family, he has no true sense of identity. Prior to being arrested, H had aimlessly worked as a sharecropper with nothing to tie him down. While working as a convict in the mine, H did make friends like Joecy and was known as someone kind and respectable. However, the reaction he receives from others in the bar after his release shows how society attempts to form people’s identities without their consent, especially when race is involved. The incident also reveals how even those in a oppressed group, such as the Black men in the bar, participate in oppressing others in an attempt to raise themselves in any way they can.

Despite H’s kindness and innocence of the crime he was accused of, H’s scars mark his identity as a convict. H’s understanding of identity is furthered when Ethe returns to see him. Although H cheated on Ethe, she found it more difficult to forgive him for the act of calling her by the other woman’s name than the cheating itself. For people who live in a generational cycle of slavery, where families are separated, often a name is all a person has from their parents. Perhaps this is also why H keeps the letter given to him by his mother instead of choosing another name.

H is able to forge a new path for himself in Pratt City, where all people regardless of skin color identify as a convict so no one is judged for the label. One of H’s descendants will later reflect that the major problem of segregation in America is that segregation is impossible, as white people own and control everything. However, in a place like Pratt City, everyone is on equal footing. Only in this place is H able to build a home, fight for his rights, and, eventually, build a family. After several generations of Esi’s descendants trying and failing to be truly free, H is finally able to attain that freedom for himself.

Previous section Abena Next section Akua