Order of Yaa Gyasi Books

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American known for writing Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom: A novel. Her debut novel, Homegoing, which won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book and the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction. She was also named as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” honors for 2016.

Yaa was born in Ghana and lived there until his family moved to the United States in 1991. She would live in multiple states before eventually settling in Huntsville, Alabama. She was inspired by Toni Morrison at a young age which helped to inspire her to write for her career. She would then attend Stanford University where she earner her Bachelor of Arts in English and then a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Yaa Gyasi Books, You’ll Love…

• Colson Whitehead
• Jesmyn Ward
• Tomi Adeyemi

Homegoing is the story of two half-sisters separated by slavery. One is a slave while the other is married to a British slaver. The two were born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia was married off to an Englishman who lives in Cape Coast Castle. While, unbeknownst to her, her sister Esi is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeon alongside other imprisoned people who are being sold to America. The story tells of both families and their rises and falls through the generations.

Gyasi’s long awaited follow-up was Transcendent Kingdom. The story focuses on a PhD candidate in neuroscience named Gifty who is studying addiction and depression in mice. She chose this as her study after her brother Nana died of a heroin overdose in high school. She turns to hard science to find out the meaning behind her family’s loss while dealing with questions of faith.