THE BRITISH COLONIZERS’ SYSTEMATIC OPPRESSION IN AFRICA: AN EXPLORATION OF YAA GYASI’S HOMEGOING

Abstract

The enduring legacy of British colonization and the Atlantic slave trade shaped and influenced the physical and psychological experiences of people of African. This paper examines the British colonizers’ systematic oppression in Africa. It purports to show how Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanaian novelist portrays shenanigans of slave masters in Africa and particularly in Cape Coast as contextualized in her first novel, Homegoing. It draws its theoretical underpinnings from the New Historicism and the psychological approach. The findings from the exploration of this narrative highlight aspects of the African’s victimization such as their inferiority complex towards the white man’s race, the shenanigans of the British Slave Masters in Africa and the subsequent psychological trauma this systematic oppression on Africans. As a final assessment, this study positions Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing as an historical novel which bringing the reader back to Africans’ experience of rejection and victimization due to the colour of their skin and their origins in their own land by the British colonizers. A way the authoress to promote healing for Africans, unveiling the historical and psychological antecedents of a harsh oppression they had been victims of, the aftermaths of which ineradicably shaped their psyche, and they are still struggling to get rig off.