Thought Train to Pusan

“ And in my village we have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.” I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that has managed to stuff so much history, trauma, heartbreak, love, hardship, and resilience into so few pages. At just 300 pages, Yaa Gyasi manages to weave a rich web of connecting stories, spanning hundreds of years in history over 7 generations. We begin with two sisters, Effia and Esi, separated at birth in their home country of Africa, and subsequent generations after them which grow further and further apart, as one sister remains in Africa married to a British officer, and the other is sold to slavery across the Atlantic ocean (the pond, in this case). There is so much to cover here, following 14 main characters in what come across as separate short stories that intrinsically connect through direct descendants. I will admit that I found the characters in the first half w...