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Akua is Abena and Ohene’s daughter. When Abena turned to the Church for help when Ohene would not marry her, the Missionary attempted to baptize her but drowned her by mistake. Thus, the Missionary raises Abena’s daughter, Akua. Akua marries Asamoah and has three children: Abee, Ama Serwah, and Yaw. After the birth of her son, Yaw, Akua is haunted by visions of a firewoman in her sleep. In her madness, she sets fire to her hut, killing her two daughters and scarring her son, thus earning her the name “Crazy Woman.” The villagers then send Yaw away in order to protect him, and after Akua’s husband dies, she lives alone with a house girl. At the end of the novel, Yaw reconciles with her, and she grows very close to her granddaughter Marjorie.
Akua / Crazy Woman Quotes in Homegoing
The Homegoing quotes below are all either spoken by Akua / Crazy Woman or refer to Akua / Crazy Woman . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 2: Akua Quotes
In her dreams the fire was shaped like a woman holding two babies to her heart. The firewoman would carry these two little girls with her all the way to the woods of the Inland and then the babies would vanish, and the firewoman’s sadness would send orange and red and hints of blue swarming every tree and every bush in sight.
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Akua’s chapter begins with her having nightmares, following an incident in which a British tourist had been burned by the villagers. Her dreams, as described here, bear a striking similarity to circumstances at the beginning of the novel, in which Maame lost both of her daughters: she lost Effia when she escaped from the Fante village because of the fire that swept through the woods, and she lost Esi in another fire in the Asante village. This nightmare haunts Akua because those two sisters were separated, and Effia (Akua’s great-great-great grandmother) and her family benefitted from the destructive force of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae volupt
“You are a sinner and a heathen,” he said. Akua nodded. The teachers had told them this before. “Your mother had no husband when she came here to me, pregnant, begging for help. I helped her because that is what God would have wanted me to do. But she was a sinner and a heathen, like you.”
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When Ohene Nyarko would not marry Abena, even though she was pregnant with his child (Akua), Abena went to the missionary church in Kumasi to seek help in having her baby. Akua had then been raised in the church, and this exchange between Akua and the Missionary demonstrates that underneath the church’s message of love, the Missionary had ulterior motives. After the British stopped the slave trade, many remained in order to colonize the Gold Coast—and the missionaries were no exception. Under the guise of wanting to spread Christianity, the missionaries were then able to take control of the land Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferen
Part 2: Yaw Quotes
“What I know now my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I'm sorry you have suffered.”
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As an adult, Yaw returns to his childhood village in order to see his estranged mother, Akua, again. When the two reunite, Akua apologizes to Yaw for burning down their hut when he was a baby, killing his two sisters and scarring his face permanently. In this passage, Akua acknowledges how she and Yaw had been affected by (and in fact cursed by) her family’s participation in the slave trade several generations earlier, and also how that evil has manifested itself in a legacy of racism in the world. As a direct result of the family’s actions, the slave trade Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor a
Part 2: Marjorie Quotes
Her father had told her that the necklace was a part of their family history and she was to never take it off, never give it away. Now it reflected the ocean water before them, gold waves shimmering in the black stone.
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When Marjorie is about to start high school, she goes to visit her grandmother, Akua, in Ghana, and the two go swimming in the water near the Cape Coast Castle. Akua comments that she has the stone that her father, Yaw, had given her just a year earlier, deeming her old enough to take care of it. Yaw’s instructions to Marjorie highlight its importance to their family and its representation of their heritage, as it has now been handed down seven generations, all the way back to Maame and Effia—in the same way that Marjorie and her family has retained Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia ea
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Akua / Crazy Woman Character Timeline in Homegoing
The timeline below shows where the character Akua / Crazy Woman appears in Homegoing. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2: Akua
Akua is frying yams in palm oil. She had grown up in missionary school, where they...
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That night, Akua has another nightmare, and her husband Asamoah wakes up and comforts her. She tells him...
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Akua spends her days in her compound with her mother-in-law, Nana Serwah, and her children, Abee...
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Akua walks to the market, stopping at the spot where the townsmen had burned the white...
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Akua had made friends with the fetish man, against the wishes of the Missionary. They called...
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Akua remembered this incident as the white man sleeping under the tree had been picked up...
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Akua returns from her walk. Nana Serwah tells her to help with the cooking. The men...
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The Missionary had kept a long, thin switch on his desk. One day, he told Akua that she would not go to class with the other students, but instead take lessons...
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Every day Akua wakes her daughters before sunrise, and they walk out singing in support of their warriors....
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Akua and Asamoah have been married for five years. He had seen her one day at...
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As the war rages on, Akua’s dreams become worse. In the midst of her turmoil, she discovers she is pregnant. One...
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At first Akua is grateful for the break, but when she sleeps, she continues to see the firewoman,...
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The Missionary would not let Akua leave the orphanage to marry Asamoah. She had asked the Missionary if he would beat...
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The Missionary went on to say that after Akua was born, he took Abena to the water to be baptized. She thrashed in the...
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Asamoah returns at the end of Akua’s week of imprisonment. Upon seeing the man at the door, he roars at Nana Serwah....
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...ends in September. Crops have died and food is limited, but they still have freedom. Akua and Asamoah try to acclimate to the loss of his leg. Akua also no longer...
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In the beginning, Akua and Asamoah had not wanted to touch each other, but one night he begins to...
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Akua begins to speak more and more, and she wanders as she sleeps. The only people...
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At home, Asamoah greets Akua and his daughters. They eat dinner together before going to sleep. Akua closes her eyes,...
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Akua then hears chants of “the Crazy Woman!” as her eyes begin to open. Ten men...
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...front of the crowd, begging them to stop. They ask how he could be on Akua’s side when she killed their children. Asamoah begins to weep; Akua thinks that she must...
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Part 2: Yaw
What Yaw had heard about his scar was this: his mother, Akua, had set the hut on fire while he and his sisters slept. Asamoah had only...
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...decides to ask Esther if she wants to go to Edweso with him to visit Akua because she had been nudging him to do so for years. She nods.
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As Yaw and Esther eat dinner, he asks what to expect from Akua. Kofi Poku explains that she lives with a house girl, tending her garden and rarely...
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The next evening, Kofi Poku brings Yaw and Esther to Akua’s house and leaves them. Yaw knocks, and the girl who answers the door is so...
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Akua puts her hands on Yaw’s scar and pulls him into an embrace. He begins to...
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Akua had then gone to the fetish priest’s son to make offerings to the ancestors, and...
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Part 2: Marjorie
Marjorie is in Ghana visiting her grandmother Akua when a boy asks her in English if she wants to see the Cape Coast...
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Marjorie arrives at Akua’s house. Akua had moved to a bungalow on the beach to be near the water....
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Marjorie and Akua go to the beach together, and Akua notes that Marjorie is wearing Effia’s stone necklace....
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...playing with his lighter. She asks him to put it away: ever since she heard Akua’s story, she has been terrified of fire.
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Marjorie is working on her poem when Yaw gets a call from Ghana, saying that Akua is very frail. Marjorie speaks to her on the phone, asking if she’s sick. Akua...
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...so: she doesn’t feel like she belongs there anymore. She says she feels her grandmother, Akua, is the only one who really understands her. When she looks up, Graham kisses her.
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For weeks, Marjorie waits for news about Akua. At school, she is quiet. She eats lunch one day in the cafeteria, and Graham...
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Akua dies in her sleep before summer. Marjorie takes the rest of the year off; her...
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Part 2: Marcus
...goes back to Ghana often. Marjorie admits that she hasn’t been back since her grandmother, Akua, passed away. She then touches her stone necklace, explaining that her grandmother gave it to...
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