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The BOOK Yaa Gyasi [debut author of  Homegoing] takes readers on a journey through three centuries that explores the effects slavery had, not just on our sociopolitical history but, on the human lives changed forever by this institution. Starting at Cape Coast Castle, the point of no return for many Africans who would be enslaved in the Americas, Gyasi introduces us to half sisters Effia and Esi, who never meet each other but are carrying similar stones left by their mo …

HOMEGOINGBy Yaa Gyasi305 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95.From the floor of the dungeon, I could see a fragment of sky through an air hole near the ceiling, a tree length beyond reach and too small for a human body to squeeze through. Nearly two centuries after humans had been chained in this fortress on the coast of ­Ghana, I stood with a group of African-American ­scholars too numb to speak. The breath and sweat of the doomed seemed brined into the walls. Might our ancestors have lain pressed again …