Quote by Yaa Gyasi: “We believe the one we love cannot be truly lost to us.”

Grief works against logic. Even when someone is gone, love makes us feel that something of them remains — accessible through memory, objects, or the ways they shaped us. This isn't denial; it's one of the ways love extends beyond loss.

Gyasi published Homegoing in 2016, at a time of heightened global reckoning with slavery's legacy following the success of the 12 Years a Slave film and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. The novel traces how historical trauma is inherited across generations.

Ghanaian-American novelist whose debut novel Homegoing (2016) traced the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade across eight generations of two Ghanaian family lines. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award, making her one of the most celebrated debut novelists of the decade.