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In Homegoing, the black stones that Maame gives to each of her two daughters, Effia and Esi, symbolize a person’s connection to his or her heritage. Effia remains on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), and her stone is passed down through seven generations of her descendants, ending with Marjorie. Esi, on the other hand, is sold into slavery, and right before she is shipped from the Gold Coast to America, she loses the stone in the women’s dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle. Thus, for the characters who remain in Ghana, the stone becomes a symbol of their connection to the culture, and is also a haunting reminder of their family’s participation in the slave trade. In contrast, for the characters in America, the stone symbolizes lost culture, as many of those characters become disconnected from their parents or the rest of their family and feel detached from their Ghanaian heritage due to American slavery. At the end of the novel, when the two final characters from each branch of the family, Marjorie and Marcus, unknowingly meet and travel to Ghana together, Marjorie gives Marcus the stone and welcomes him home to Ghana, thus acknowledging his lost culture and attempting to make amends to help him to regain his connection to the country.
Black Stones Quotes in Homegoing
The Homegoing quotes below all refer to the symbol of Black Stones. 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: 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
Part 2: Marcus Quotes
“Here,” Marjorie said. “Have it.” She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home.”
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In the final pages of the novel, Marjorie and Marcus travel back to Ghana together and visit the Cape Coast Castle. On the beach, Marcus is forced to face his fear of water as Marjorie leads him into the ocean. Once he gets there, Marjorie welcomes him home and gives him her stone necklace. This gesture is highly symbolic, as the necklace is representative of Ghanaian heritage. Marjorie’s family has been able to pass it down for seven generations, while Marcus’s branch of the family tree lost its stone when Esi was taken from the dungeon of the Cape Coast 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
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Black Stones Symbol Timeline in Homegoing
The timeline below shows where the symbol Black Stones appears in Homegoing. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1: Quey
...and English. She also tells him the story of her mother Maame and the black stone Maame had given her.
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Part 2: Yaw
...for answers about her mother, she had been able to get back one thing: Effia’s stone pendant.
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...gone to the fetish priest’s son to make offerings to the ancestors, and seeing the stone necklace, he had said that there was evil in Akua’s lineage. Akua knows that he...
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