Who would ever remember this? Family Memory in Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and Monkey Hunting by Cristina García

Abstract

This work analyzes the transmission of family memory in the novels Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016) and Monkey Hunting by Cristina García (2003), two family sagas in which the institution of slavery is pivotal to the formation and development of genealogies. These narrations feature characters who experience different types of forced labor, namely slavery and indentured labor. Not only do these experiences cause separations and hinder the transmission of memories related to a genealogy’s past, but they also enrich a family’s original culture thanks to the geographical dynamism that characterizes such histories. In fact, both novels recount the displacement of a lineage from its homeland to an overseas nation: in Homegoing the lineage is forcibly transported from Ghana to the U.S., where family memory of the past is lost due to the separations and obstacles posed by slavery; still, it is preserved in the communal memory of the African-American community. Monkey Hunting represents a different case because, after the family’s relocation from China to Cuba, and subsequently to the U.S. and Vietnam, the memory of the past is transmitted from one generation to another in spite of the contact with a different form of slavery, that is, indentured servitude. As family sagas, the novels narrate the experiences of members of different lineages whose memory of the past is either lost or passed on to descendants, but always enriched. Its transmission is crucial for a community’s historical and social memory and calls into question the concept of national borders and exclusive history through the transnationality of such memories.