Issue Cover Art: Homecoming Collage

Authors

Rhi N. Soto, Portland State UniversityFollow

Keywords

Collage, Yaa Gyasi, Indigeneity, colonialism, generational trauma, historical fiction

Abstract

This piece is a found poem/collage made from different magazine cut-outs glued onto red construction paper. What inspired its creation is the book Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. In this book, Gyasi describes colonialism's over 400-year impact on the continent of Africa, the Indigenous people to those lands, and their ancestors. She does this by writing a historical fiction story of a family that started in what is now considered current-day Ghana, taking place from the mid-1700s to the early 2000s. The family starts with the mother of two sisters, Maame, who leaves her first daughter (Effia) while her village is set on fire. After she runs away, she is captured by a new village, forced to be a warrior's wife, and has his child (Esi). From this, Effia's lineage stays in Africa and sees colonialism's effects in-continent (primarily the Gold Coast area), while Esi's lineage is captured, forced into slavery in North America, and sees colonialism's effects on people in the United States. Throughout the book, the symbolism of fire is used for Effia's lineage starting with the village she grows up in being on fire during her birth, and the symbolism of water for Esi's as first seen with enslaved people being thrown (or throwing themselves) into the sea while on slave ships. The book's telling of colonialism's multi-generation impact, and its motifs of fire and water inspired me to make this piece.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43219

DOI

10.15760/amplify.2025.3.1.6

Recommended Citation

Soto, Rhi N. (2025) "Issue Cover Art: Homecoming Collage," Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1.
https://doi.org/10.15760/amplify.2025.3.1.6