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Yusuf's Mind map : Homegoing (Pain and suffering (Types of suffering,…

- - - - Effia
        
        Effia was subject to the mental and sometimes physical torture of her step mother, Baaba. Baaba resented her because Cobbe would beat her for beating Effia. She tried manipulating Effia at a young age by trying to make her hide her puberty. Baaba did this so that she would not marry the tribe leader, Abeeku (very ideal), but rather with a white man. She said that Effia was bad luck and should be given to the white man to improve slave trading relations and get Effia's bad luck away. Quote (11): Effia would see that her mother's new quiet was only temporary, her rage a wild beast that had been tamed for the moment.
        
        Quey's source of emotional distress is his identity. He does not fit in anywhere, due to his parent's differing ethnicities. Quey cannot fit in with the British nor the Fante. His friend Cudjo, makes the matters worse after making the Richard joke with the snail. At a young age Quey understands he does not fit in! Quey is also in "the closet" or has not officially revealed his sexuality. Quey does not feel safe enough in the society he grew up in to reveal his gay feelings. His father obviously does not support of this, and especially anyone in this time period. Quote (61): Maybe I should have stayed in London... It was safer there... In England he'd gotten to see the way black people lived in white communities, Indians and Africans who were packed twenty or more to a room.
        
        Kojo was a free slave living in Baltimore, but worried about his freedom being snatched away from him. He constantly worried about the slave catchers who would try to take him and his family back to being slaves. Kojo was living in constant fear of his freedom being taken away. Kojo's wife was then taken away and sold as a slave, while pregnant. This only worsened Kojo's fears and mental status.
        
        Akua has the most significant mental suffering out of all the characters in this novel. The class had debated whether or not she had an actual mental disability. Akua keeps on having dreams/nightmares which consists of fire and a fire woman carrying two babies. She would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, but she did not take any significant precautions to stop this. She did meet with a fetish priest who told her that the fire woman was someone from her past. The dreams started after she saw white woman killed and burned for just being white. Akua also undergoes mental suffering as the white Christian priest is rather abusive towards her. He keeps telling her that she is sinner and so was her mother. The priest even tells her that he killed her mother in attempt to baptize her, this made Akua care less about who god was or the hell fire. Eventually Akua's mental suffering would lead her to burn all her children to death, except Yaw (All in her sleep
        
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  - - - Esi's enslavement
        
        Esi was taken slave after her village was raided by Little Dove's tribe. Esi was taken slave and kept in Cape Coast Castle. She was kept in unimaginable conditions in the dungeons. She had given birth to Ness while enslaved; the father was a British slave trader who had raped Esi. Before she was taken onto a slave ship towards the U.S. she loses her black stone necklace she had buried in the feces of the slaves.
        
        Ness in Hell
        
        Ness was born into enslavement and was ripped away from her mother at a young age. She was forced to pick cotton in the fields of Alabama. Her husband and herself were whipped by the Devil many times, she took blame for Sam and vice versa. Ness never had any significantly happy times in her life because she was born a slave and she was only with the sad and desperate emotions she associates with her mother.
        
        Yaw's distress and pain is both mental and physical. The scars he gained as a small child have always been a big part of his identity. Even though they do not hurt him anymore, they affect him in many ways. His scars are a constant reminder of his past and his distant relationship with his mother. The biggest affect of these physical scars is that it causes him to question his past. Yaw wants to understand his past and how he got his scars, but can't due to his limited knowledge. Just like Quey, Yaw also has a identity crisis. In this case I would say his physical suffering is responsible for his mental suffering. Intresting quote about scars that I might want to explore along with when Akua says evil can transform and be passed down: "If I marry him, my children will be ugly," ... he had explained to the girl that you could not inherit a scar. (228)
        
        H was a black man wrongfully committed of a crime and jailed. Due to his lack of money to pay off his offenses, he was sent to hard labor in the mining camps. He was required to shovel insane amounts of coal everyday, or risked punishment possibly ending with death. Even after his incarceration, the hard life and scars H had gotten from the mines lived on with him. He lost one of his closest friends, and his reputation as a person was destroyed for his time in the mines. (Lady in the bar sees his scars and cannot trust him)