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Posterity/Marriage (Marjorie (Daughter of Yaw and Esther (Close to her…

- - - - Loves ghana
        
        Dooesn't come back, forgets Twi eventaully
        
        Loves Graham, who eventually betrays her
        
        "I came to these waters and I could feel the spirits of our ancestors calling to me. Some were free, and they spoke to me from the sand, but some others were trapped deep, deep, deep in the water so that I had to wade out to hear their voices. I waded out so far, the water almost took me down to meet those spirits that were trapped so deep in the sea that they would never be free." (Gyasi, 268)
- - - - "It's because of all that space. It's because everywhere I look, I see blue, and I have no idea where it begins" (Gyasi, 296)
  - - - "The wet salt stink clung to his nose and made him feel as though he was already drowning" (Gyasi, 284)
      - "Let the water beat over his head, never lifting his face up toward it, still scared of drowning" (Gyasi, 286)
- - - - He was gay but his father sent him away before he could act on his feelings.
        
        He married out of posterity.
        
        "What you cannot hear, Quey, is the third bird. She is quiet, quiet, listening to the male birds get louder and lounder still. And when they have sung their voices out, then and only then will she speak up. Then and only then will she choose the man whose song she liked better. For now she sits, and lets them argue: who will be the better partner, who will give her better seed, who will fight for her when times are difficult" (Gyasi, 53)
        
        Reference to the silence voices of history? Queys sexuality sitting silent until he can get a chance to act upon it.
      - "He could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father's whiteness nor his mother's blackness. Neither England nor the Gold Coast" (Gyasi, 56)
        
        He feels that with his half-caste status he is unable to fully take on the histories of both side.
        
        "Evil is like a shadow. It follows you" (Gyasi, 63)
    - - Imagery to the oppression within England
- - - - Despite scars was named "Effia the beauty"
    - - Ancestory is an inevitable piece of baggage that cannot be dropped; it is something that must be faced or it will continue repeating itself.
    - - Abuse cycle; family roles; patriarchy
        
        "Cobbe's family feasted off Effia's burgeoning womandhood. Their bellies, their hands, were never empty." (Gyasi, 3)
        
        Children are exploited
        
        "Why will Adowa marry this man?" "Because he mother says so." (Gyasi, 6)
        
        "Her rage a wild beast that had been tamed for the moment" (Gyasi, 11)
- - - - easy childhood
        
        Her father only abused their slave girl, Little Dove.
        
        He beat her out of strength; he didn't want to be weak
        
        "Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing everyone belongs to themselves" (Gyasi
        
        38)
        
        Attackers came to her village
        
        She tried to hide in a tree but they threw rocks until she fell down
        
        Emprisoned and raped, earned nickname "Frownie" because her heart was so hard.
        
        "White men smiling just meant more evil was coming with the next wave" (Gyasi, 49)
        
        Possible reference to next generation?
        
        Her village was war-hungry
        
        "Tommorow, if they pay more, we will work with them too. This is how you build a village. Do you understand? (Gyasi, 45)
        
        Success is rated by violence and "not being weak"
        
        '"There was nothing her parents would refuse her"" (Gyasi, 30)
        
        "Be careful of fire. Know when to use it and when to stay cold" (Gyasi, 33)
        
        Separated from sister Effia
        
        "We have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond" (Gyasi, 39)
- - - - Married fellow slave Sam; very angry man
      - They tried to escape the plantation and Sam got killed and Ness got whipped and got scars
        
        They had a son who they gave to a woman named Aku.
      - Take motherly responsibility over young slave named Pinky who is mute. (By choice?)
      - "The Devil shows no mercy, even though he knows she is lying." (Gyasi, 81)
      - "It was bad. [...] But it wasn't no dream" (Gyasi, 82)
        
        A nightmare about the reality she lives in?
      - Referred to as "Hell" and the master as the "Devil"
- - - - Doesn't want to keep the family tradition
        
        Pretends to go missing; find a new life
      - Finds a Akosua at his fathers funeral; strong woman
      - "The pot was already filled to the brim before the white men came and added fire" (Gyasi, 89)
- - - - Marries Anna and has eight children
        
        Makes a living working on boats
        
        His wife is taken away, he moves to New York.
        
        "The fire had been magnificent, and so hot it was like the Devil's breath, and before Jo knew it, it had started to chase the wood of the deck." (Gyasi, 117)
        
        Fire is seductive and toxic
- - - - She is taken advantage of by her childhood friend Ohene
        
        She leaves her village to have her child
- - - - Once he finishes his sentence he continues working and joins a union
      - He misses his woman Ethe who he cheated on
        
        He sends her a letter asking to come back and start a family with him
        
        "Alabama had turned H's loneliness into something like a physical presence. He could hold it when he went to bed at night. It was in the handle of his hoe, in the puffs of cotton that floated away." (Gyasi, 159)
      - Works hard in the mind. Works to be freed; hope
        
        "They would always be coated in a layer of black dust, their arms burning. Sometimes H thought that burning pain would set the coal on fire, and they would all die there, from the pain of it. But he knew, it wasn't just pain that could kill a man in the mine" (Gyasi, 161)
      - "Can't nobody kill me" (Gyasi, 157)
        
        "War may be over but it ain't ended" (Gyasi, 158)
        
        "No such thing as a free nigger" (Gyasi, 160)
      - Eventually works himself free
        
        "Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind" (Gyasi, 168)
        
        "Both colors joining the same unions, fighting for the same things. The mines had taught them that they had to rely on each other if they wanted to survive" (Gyasi, 169)
- - - - Eventually turns into the fire woman and kills her daughters in her sleep
      - "The sound made her jump. It was a hungry sound, the sound of oil swallowing whatever it was given." (Gyasi, 177)
        
        "Horrible nightmares where fire consumed everything, where it ran from the coast of Fanteland all the way into Asante." (Gyasi, 177)
        
        "Becayse even thought she feared the new sounds, she knew she needed to hear them too." (Gyasi, 178)
- - - - Have a son together
      - Robert leaves her because of societal queues
        
        She meets Eli and has a daughter
      - "Soon Pratt City started to feel like a speck of dust in Willie's eye. She couldn't be free of it" (Gyasi 204)
        
        "Everything about it was focused on what lay beneath the ground" (Gyasi, 205)
    - - "She imagined that the sound came from a cave at the very bottom of her gut, that like her father and all the men in front of her, she was a miner reaching deep down inside of her to pull something valuable out." (Gyasi, 201)
- - - - "The map of Yaw's skin had lead him nowhere" (Gyasi, 227)
    - - Becomes a teacher and writer and marries his house girl, Esther
        
        "We will never be free" (Gyasi, 223)
        
        "A book was a thing a child could want--need, even" (Gyasi, 225)
        
        "He was attracted to the rage that lit each sentence of their books on fire" (Gyasi, 229)
        
        "Forgiveness, they shouted, all while committing their wrongs." (Gyasi, 237)
        
        "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" (Gyasi, 242)
- - - - "You can't do a single thing, can you?" (Gyasi, 246)
      - "He didn't start out white" (Gyasi, 261)
      - "That ain't true, Carson,I fought for you" (Gyasi, 261)
      - "Took me a long time to figure out that you was born to a man who could choose his life,, but you wouldn't never be able to choose yours, and it seemed like you was born knowing that" (Gyasi, 262)
    - - Gets addicted to heroine.
        
        Moves back in with his mother to get clean and sticks to a schedule