Erie Reader Book Club: February 2025 Selection

Erin Phillips

Join the members of the Erie Reader Book Club for their February meeting at Werner Books and Coffee when they discuss Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in conjunction with the Reader's Black History Month issue.

SUNDAY, FEB. 23

The Erie Reader Book Club will meet the last Sunday in February at 1 p.m. at Werner Books and Coffee to discuss the novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi to correspond with the Reader's Black History Month issue.

Homegoing tells the story of one family, from their origins in eighteenth century Ghana. Two half sisters are born into different villages - and their fates couldn't be more different. One will be sent off to marry a white Englishman in a castle on the coast while the other will live in the same castle, only in the dungeons, and sold into slavery.

The story unfolds into a split family tree and spanning eight generations - telling the story of familial- and societally-intereted trauma while also telling the history of America through the plantations of Mississsippi, the Civil War and into Jazz Age Harlem. This grand-sweeping novel covers vast swaths of history while also showing the intimate lives of those who lived it.

"Yaa Gyasi's extraordinary novel illuminates slavery's troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed - and shows how the membory of capitivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation."

At just 26 years old, Gyasi won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for Best First Book for this novel, as well as the American Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. 

Join the members of the Erie Reader Book Club as we discuss the novel - the club is always open to new members and the discussion is free to join.

1 p.m. // Werner Books and Coffee, 3608 Liberty St. // Free to join, cost of book not included // For more info: wernerbooks.com