Abstract

Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing presents the horrific sequences of black women’s experience throughout history. Such experience encompasses the plights—both mundane and spectacular—of women’s marginalization and deprivation. Gyasi’s narrative style, by turns historical and racially intimate, evokes common themes of misogynoir; and her novel abounds with deprived protagonists and androcentric entities. Focusing on black women’s experience, this study theoretically attempts to explore the concept of feminist “courageous code” as an antithesis of misogynoir to empower their social equality and self-autonomy. The study critically considers how Gyasi utilizes a historical aesthetic narrative in her writing to critique and unravel the unspeakable oppression experienced by black women. Interpreting the intersection of literary oppression and theoretical “courageous code,” this study argues that Gyasi’s Homegoing bridges the gap between the oppressed black women and patriarchal stereotyping, reinforcing the fictional expectations of her largely gender equality. The study, therefore, seeks to find authenticity, look for female subjectivity and self-autonomy; and it anticipates abjection of misogynoir and all its implications via feminist “courageous code.”

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