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Homecoming Essay

Decent Essays

Throughout the novel “Homecoming,” the effects of the slave trade on the characters are explored. For example, Quey, the son of Effia, feels the pressure of carrying on his father’s slave industry in the midst of struggling with his identities. According to Quey, “he was one of the half-caste children of the Castle, and, like the other half-caste children, he could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father’s whiteness nor his mother’s blackness. Neither England nor the Gold coast” (Gyasi 55). Quey makes it clear that he struggles to find his place in the world because he could never put an identity on himself. When asked to accept a position in his mother’s village, Quey was not enthusiastic about it because he had …show more content…

To be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, a crucial decision” (Li 144). Yiyun mentions how she does not write in Chinese nor does she have her books translated into Chinese. The reason for Yiyun distancing herself from her native language is because it is not “her private language.” In her memoir, Yiyun expands on how English is her private language. According to Yiyun, “English is my private language. Every word has to be pondered over before it becomes my word...In my relationship with English, in this relationship with its intrinsic distance that makes people look askance, I feel invisible but not estranged. It is the position I believe I always want in life” (Li,146). In the English language, Yiyun felt she could truly express herself. Every word she thought and wrote down belonged to her. Chinese, on the other hand, was her public language. In Chinese, Yiyun questioned if “one could form a precise thought, recall an accurate memory, or even feel a genuine feeling” (Li 147). In other words, Chinese limited the way Yiyun could express her emotion and ideas, which is why she chose to distance herself from it. In “Dear friend, from my life I write to you in your life” and “Homecoming,” the theme of identity crisis is prominent. In the novel “Homecoming,” the character of Quey struggles with coming to terms with his

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