Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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In 2009 a Stanford student on a research grant in Ghana visited Cape Coast Castle, where a guide told her that British soldiers stationed there had married local women while enslaved Africans were held in the dungeons below. Yaa Gyasi, born in Mampong in 1989 and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, turned that image of one woman upstairs and one downstairs into Homegoing (2016), a debut that sold for an advance of more than a million dollars and won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom (2020), moved from three centuries to one family in Alabama and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This guide covers her two key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2016–2020 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Yaa Gyasi has published two novels: Homegoing (2016), which follows the descendants of two Ghanaian half-sisters across about 250 years, and Transcendent Kingdom (2020), about a neuroscientist from a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Start with Homegoing. Below: what each book is about, the prizes, and how she builds her novels.
Where to Start with Yaa Gyasi
If you want her defining book
→ Homegoing (2016) — the 2016 debut that won the PEN/Hemingway Award.
If you want history told through one family line at a time
→ Homegoing (2016) — Ghana and America, chapter by chapter.
If you want a close, present-day story
→ Transcendent Kingdom (2020) — one narrator, her mother and her brother.
If you want a novel about science and faith
→ Transcendent Kingdom (2020) — a neuroscientist raised in an evangelical church.
2 Yaa Gyasi Books, in Order
Homegoing
Two half-sisters are born in eighteenth-century Ghana: Effia marries the British governor of Cape Coast Castle, while Esi is held in the castle’s dungeons and shipped to America as a slave. Each chapter follows one descendant, alternating between the line that stays in Ghana and the line in America, from the slave trade and the Asante wars to Alabama’s coal mines, Harlem and present-day Stanford. It also won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book and the American Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
Transcendent Kingdom
Gifty, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford, studies reward-seeking behaviour in mice while her depressed mother lies in her bed. The novel moves back to her childhood in Huntsville, Alabama, where her brother Nana, a gifted athlete, became addicted to OxyContin after an ankle injury and died of an overdose, and to the evangelical church she grew up in. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and chosen for the Today show’s Read with Jenna book club.
In What Order to Read Yaa Gyasi
The two novels are not connected, so either can come first. Publication order makes sense anyway: Homegoing covers the long history and ends with two young people in America, and Transcendent Kingdom stays in the present with one Ghanaian family in Alabama, close to where the first book stops.
If you prefer a single voice to a large cast, start with Transcendent Kingdom instead; Homegoing asks you to meet a new main character in every chapter.
A reading path
1. Homegoing (2016)
2. Transcendent Kingdom (2020)
3. “Bad Blood” in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021)
Everything Else Yaa Gyasi Published
Beyond the 2 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Short fiction in anthologies
1
1 book · 2021
- 2021The 1619 Project: A New Origin Storyincludes her short story “Bad Blood”
The years · 1989–2021
Quick facts about Yaa Gyasi
- Known for
- Homegoing, her 2016 debut that traces slavery’s legacy through two branches of one Ghanaian family, one in Africa and one in America
- 1989
- Born in Mampong, Ghana
- 1991
- Family moves to the United States
- 2009
- Visits Cape Coast Castle on a research trip
- 2016
- Homegoing
- 2021
- Transcendent Kingdom on the Women’s Prize shortlist
- Born
- 1989, Mampong, Ghana
- Raised
- Ohio, Illinois and Tennessee, then Huntsville, Alabama
- Parents
- Kwaku Gyasi, a professor of French at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Sophia, a nurse
- Education
- BA in English, Stanford; MFA, Iowa Writers’ Workshop
- Honours
- National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 (2016); Granta Best of Young American Novelists (2017)
- Lives
- Brooklyn, New York
The red mark is 2016: Homegoing, her debut novel.
How Yaa Gyasi Writes: One Family, Many Chapters
Homegoing is built as a family tree: fourteen chapters, each centred on a different descendant of the two half-sisters, alternating between the Ghanaian line and the American one. Each chapter has to stand on its own, a new person in a new generation, and the reader carries the connections. Critics were divided on this form: some praised its range, while Laura Miller in The New Yorker and Kirkus found it closer to a linked story collection than an epic.
The novel came out of a single contrast she saw in 2009 at Cape Coast Castle. She later said she knew immediately that she wanted to write about someone upstairs, free, and someone downstairs, a slave. Covering about 250 years meant heavy research, which she has called the most difficult part of writing the book. She began it at Stanford and, by her own account, it really took shape at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Transcendent Kingdom works at the opposite scale: one narrator, Gifty, and a few years of her life, moving between her lab at Stanford and her childhood in Alabama. Gyasi puts neuroscience and evangelical faith side by side rather than choosing between them, and lets the questions about addiction and depression stay open. It grew out of her 2015 short story “Inscape”.
Watch
Yaa Gyasi at the National Book Festival
Gyasi speaks at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in 2021, the year after Transcendent Kingdom was published.
Frequently asked questions about Yaa Gyasi’s books
How many books has Yaa Gyasi written?
Two novels: Homegoing (2016) and Transcendent Kingdom (2020). She has also published a short story, “Bad Blood”, in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021), and essays in The New York Times and The Guardian.
What are Yaa Gyasi’s books in order?
Homegoing (2016), then Transcendent Kingdom (2020).
Where should I start with Yaa Gyasi?
With Homegoing, her debut and her best-known book. If you prefer one narrator and a present-day setting, start with Transcendent Kingdom; the two novels are not connected.
What is Yaa Gyasi’s most famous book?
Homegoing (2016). It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book and the American Book Award, and the BBC included it in its 2019 list of 100 novels that shaped our world.
What is Homegoing about?
Two half-sisters in eighteenth-century Ghana, Effia and Esi, and their descendants. Effia marries the British governor of Cape Coast Castle; Esi is held in its dungeons and sold into slavery in America. Each chapter follows one descendant, ending in the present day.
Is Homegoing based on a true story?
The characters are invented, but the history is real. The idea came from Gyasi’s 2009 visit to Cape Coast Castle, where British soldiers married local women while captives were held in the dungeons below.
Is Transcendent Kingdom autobiographical?
It is fiction, but it shares parts of her background: Gifty’s family, like Gyasi’s, came from Ghana and settled in Huntsville, Alabama. The novel grew out of her 2015 short story “Inscape”.
Has Homegoing been made into a film or TV series?
No film or television adaptation of either novel has been released.
How do you pronounce Yaa Gyasi?
Her surname is pronounced like “Jessie”.
Is Yaa Gyasi still alive?
Yes. She was born in 1989 in Mampong, Ghana, moved to the United States as a toddler in 1991, and lives in Brooklyn.
Footnotes
- Yaa Gyasi — Wikipedia
- Homegoing (Gyasi novel) — Wikipedia
- Transcendent Kingdom — Wikipedia
- Homegoing — NEA Big Read
- Interview with Yaa Gyasi, 2017 PEN/Hemingway Award winner — Hemingway Society
- Transcendent Kingdom — Penguin Random House
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story.”
— Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (2016), spoken by the teacher Yaw
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