Explore the real places in Accra that appear in Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Cape Coast Castle, Asante Kingdom — Kumasi, The Door of No Return — Cape Coast, Fante Merchant Settlements, The Middle Passage Route and 10 more.
Cape Coast, Ghana — The Heart of the Slave Trade
Cape Coast Castle is the central nexus of the entire novel. Esi is imprisoned in the dungeons before being sold into slavery. The castle represents the horrific machinery of the transatlantic slave trade, where African women and men were shackled, branded, and loaded onto ships. Yaa Gyasi uses the castle's architecture—its dungeons, its door of no return—as a metaphor for the permanent separation of families across centuries. The novel returns to Cape Coast repeatedly as generations of the family pass through this place of rupture.
Cape Coast Castle was built by the Swedes in 1653 and later captured by the British in 1664. It became the British seat of power on the Gold Coast and housed a thriving slave trade operation. From its dungeons, an estimated 500,000 enslaved Africans passed through over the centuries before being forcibly shipped to the Americas.
Cape Coast Castle is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and major museum operated by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. Visitors can tour the dungeons, the Door of No Return, and exhibitions documenting the slave trade. It serves as a pilgrimage site for diaspora Africans and descendants of enslaved people.
Visit: Cape Coast Castle Museum (historic site)
Kumasi, Ghana — Seat of the Asante Empire
Kumasi is the heart of the Asante Kingdom, where Cobbe and the early generations of the family tree originate. The city represents power, tradition, and the strength of the Asante people before European conquest. Yaa Gyasi depicts Kumasi as a thriving kingdom with its own politics, customs, and complex relationship with slavery—the Asante themselves participated in the slave trade, capturing enemies and selling them to European traders. Quey, born in Kumasi, experiences the city's wealth and status before his fateful decision.
Kumasi became the capital of the Asante Empire in the 17th century under Osei Tutu. The city reached its height in the 18th and 19th centuries as a center of gold trade, craftsmanship, and military power. The Asante Confederacy was one of West Africa's most sophisticated political structures, but it fell to British conquest in the late 1800s.
Kumasi remains Ghana's second-largest city and cultural heart. The Asante Cultural Centre preserves royal traditions, artifacts, and history. The Manhyia Palace Museum houses the reconstructed palace of the Asante kings and exhibits on royal history and regalia.
Visit: Manhyia Palace Museum (museum)
Cape Coast Castle Dungeons — Portal to Diaspora
The Door of No Return is the literal and metaphorical heart of Yaa Gyasi's meditation on separation and loss. Esi passes through this doorway on her way to the slave ships, severing her from her daughter Amma, her homeland, and her ancestry. The door represents the permanent rupture between African and diaspora branches of the family. Each of Esi's descendants in America carries the trauma of this passage, even generations removed, while Amma's descendants in Ghana are haunted by her loss.
The Door of No Return at Cape Coast Castle is the final exit point through which enslaved people walked toward the slave ships. Constructed in the castle's dungeons, it is one of the most loaded architectural symbols in the African diaspora, representing irreversible loss and the violence of the Middle Passage.
The Door of No Return remains preserved at Cape Coast Castle. It has become a site of pilgrimage, mourning, and reconciliation for diaspora Africans. Many visitors from the Americas and Caribbean walk through the door in reverse as a spiritual reclamation or act of remembrance.
Visit: Cape Coast Castle Museum (historic site)
Cape Coast Region — Fante Trading Communities
The Fante settlements around Cape Coast represent the complex African participation in the slave trade. James Africanus and other free-born merchants of color conduct their business in this region, profiting from the trade while maintaining African identity. Yaa Gyasi portrays these figures—neither fully European nor enslaved—navigating impossible contradictions. Their wealth and literacy come from human trafficking, a moral catastrophe the novel does not shy from examining.
The Fante people were the dominant group in the Cape Coast region and became some of the earliest African merchants involved in European trade. By the 18th century, a class of free-born mulatto and African traders emerged, operating between European and African worlds. These families accumulated wealth and education, creating a complex Atlantic creole merchant class.
The Cape Coast region retains evidence of Fante settlement patterns and architecture. Many family compounds and historical sites document the presence of merchant families, though much has been lost to modernization and tourism development.
Atlantic Ocean — Journey to America (1760s-1760s)
The Middle Passage is not a single place but a harrowing journey that Esi endures in the hold of a slave ship. Yaa Gyasi captures the psychological and physical horror: the darkness, disease, dehumanization, and death below deck. During this crossing, Esi is severed forever from Amma, from Ghana, from her name and identity. The voyage becomes the defining trauma that splits the family tree into American and Ghanaian branches, a geographic and spiritual rupture that reverberates through every subsequent generation.
The Middle Passage was the forced journey of millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries. Ships like those that carried Esi packed hundreds of people into suffocating holds. Mortality rates ranged from 10-25%, with death from disease, malnutrition, and suicide common. The journey typically lasted 4-8 weeks.
The Atlantic Ocean has become a memorial space. Various underwater archaeology projects and memorial initiatives honor the millions who perished. The Middle Passage is taught extensively in schools and remembered through rituals and monuments in diaspora communities.
Interior Ghana — Cobbe's Hunting Grounds
The forests and hunting grounds of the Asante interior are where Cobbe roams as a young man, before his family's involvement in the slave trade. These forests represent freedom, tradition, and a pre-colonial way of life. Yaa Gyasi uses the landscape to underscore what will be lost—the Asante way of life, indigenous autonomy, and the possibility of living outside the slave trade's machinery. The forests are presented nostalgically, as a paradise before the fall into moral compromise.
The interior forests of Ghana were home to multiple kingdoms and ethnic groups, including the Asante. These regions were sites of hunting, farming, and traditional spiritual practice. The landscape supported the Asante Empire's power and provided resources that fueled trade networks, both in goods and in enslaved people.
Much of Ghana's interior remains forested, though logging and agriculture have reduced forest coverage. National parks and reserves protect remaining forest ecosystems. The Kakum National Park preserves canopy forests in the region where Homegoing's Asante characters lived.
Visit: Kakum National Park (park)
Alabama, USA (fictional) — Location based on antebellum Alabama plantations
Filoment Plantation represents the American destination of Esi's forced diaspora. Though the plantation is fictional, it grounds the American half of the family tree in the realities of slavery. Esi's descendants work these fields and are born into bondage. The plantation is the site of generational trauma, sexual violence, family separation, and the dehumanization that Yaa Gyasi portrays as the American shadow hanging over every subsequent generation. The work songs, the auction blocks, the whippings—all originate here.
Alabama plantations like the fictional Filoment were central to antebellum slavery and cotton production. Plantations in Alabama employed over 400,000 enslaved people by 1860. The wealth generated on these plantations flowed to Northern industrialists and European markets. Many families, like Esi's descendants, remained enslaved in Alabama through the Civil War.
Many Alabama plantation sites are preserved as historic locations, some with museums documenting enslaved life. Others remain private property. The landscape of Alabama retains the physical geography of slavery, though the human structures are gone.
Visit: Historic Plantations (varies by site) (historic site)
New York City — Marcus, Abram, and the Great Migration
Harlem is the northern destination of the American branch of the family, where Marcus and Abram arrive during the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem represents possibility, community, intellectual awakening, and the Black freedom struggle. Marcus works as a carpenter and activist, attempting to build a better life for his family outside the South. Yet Harlem too is marked by the legacy of slavery—segregation, economic exploitation, and the intergenerational trauma that Yaa Gyasi traces through Marcus's struggles with identity, shame, and his relationship to his African ancestry.
Harlem became the center of African American culture and life in the early 20th century, particularly during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s. Black families migrated from the South seeking economic opportunity and freedom from Jim Crow. Harlem was a thriving cultural center with jazz clubs, theaters, schools, and intellectual ferment, but it also faced segregation, redlining, and exploitation by white landlords.
Harlem remains a historically significant neighborhood with preserved brownstones, cultural institutions, and street landmarks. The Apollo Theater, Studio Museum in Harlem, and numerous historic churches and cultural centers document the neighborhood's legacy. Gentrification has transformed the area in recent decades.
Visit: Apollo Theater (theater)
Kumasi, Ghana — Symbol of Asante Power
The Golden Stool is referenced throughout Homegoing as a symbol of Asante sovereignty, power, and the kingdom's spiritual and political authority. Though Yaa Gyasi does not place specific scenes at the stool itself, it looms symbolically over the Asante characters' relationship to power, legitimacy, and the choices they make regarding the slave trade. The stool represents what will be lost when British colonialism dismantles Asante independence.
The Golden Stool was created in the late 17th century under Osei Tutu, the founder of the Asante Confederacy. It is believed to house the collective soul of the Asante people and is the supreme symbol of Asante kingship and unity. The British attempted to seize it during the Asante wars, leading to the famous Yaa Asantewaa rebellion of 1900-1901 to protect it.
The Golden Stool is preserved and displayed at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi. It is one of the most sacred Asante artifacts and remains a symbol of national pride and Asante heritage. It is rarely removed from the palace except during major ceremonial occasions.
Visit: Manhyia Palace Museum (museum)
Rural Asante Region — Amma's Homeland Community
Effiduase represents the rural Asante village life that Amma experiences after Esi's departure. It is the site where Amma raises her daughter Akosua and maintains the family connections severed by Esi's enslavement. Though fictional, Effiduase grounds the Ghanaian branch of the family tree in village kinship networks, spiritual traditions, and the quotidian rhythms of life that continue in the wake of loss. Amma's descendants inherit both her strength and the wound of Esi's absence.
Rural Asante villages like the fictional Effiduase were organized around extended family compounds, common agricultural practices, and spiritual traditions. Villages maintained social structures and knowledge systems that had existed for centuries before European contact. Colonial intrusion and capitalism gradually disrupted these traditional communities.
Rural Asante communities continue to exist throughout the region, though modernization, education, and migration have transformed village life. Many retain traditional compounds and family structures, though younger generations often migrate to cities for education and economic opportunity.
Aburi, Ghana — Colonialism and Heritage
Though not explicitly featured in Homegoing, Aburi represents the colonial intervention into Ghanaian landscape and life that affected later generations. The botanical gardens, established by the British as an administrative center, symbolize how colonialism transformed and controlled the physical and cultural environment. This location contextualizes the world that later generations like Akosua and Esi-in-Ghana inherit—a land shaped by colonial presence, missionary Christianity, and Western education systems that complicate African identity.
The Aburi Botanical Gardens were established in 1890 as part of the British colonial administration's development programs. Originally a Government House, the site was transformed into botanical gardens to acclimatize and cultivate plants for export. The gardens reflect Victorian landscape design imposed on African terrain.
Aburi Botanical Gardens remain a major tourist attraction and heritage site. They showcase tropical plants and offer panoramic views of the surrounding landscape. The gardens host cultural events and serve as a space where both local visitors and tourists engage with Ghana's natural and colonial heritage.
Visit: Aburi Botanical Gardens (park)
Southern United States — Legacy and Trauma Region
The American South looms throughout Homegoing as the geographic space of slavery and its aftermath. Characters like Esi's descendants navigate enslavement, Jim Crow, segregation, and intergenerational trauma rooted in this region. Yaa Gyasi explores how Southern slavery's violence shapes the psychology, relationships, and identities of Black Americans across generations. The South represents the place where African identity is violently erased and reconstructed as subordinate Blackness under white supremacy.
The American South was built on slavery and plantation agriculture from the 17th through 19th centuries. Millions of enslaved Africans and their descendants were forced to labor in the South, generating wealth that fueled American development. After slavery's abolition, Jim Crow segregation maintained racial subordination and economic exploitation for another century.
The American South remains marked by slavery's legacy, including racial inequity, economic disparities, and ongoing efforts to reckon with this history through museums, monuments, and educational initiatives. Many plantations sites are now museums documenting enslaved life.
Visit: Various Museums and Historic Sites (historic site)
Tafo, Ghana — Gold Coast Trading Post
Tafo represents the interior trading networks that funneled enslaved people toward Cape Coast. Characters move through these commercial networks, caught between profit motives and moral awareness. Quey's travels involve the slave trade's logistical infrastructure, including the routes and settlements where people were bought, sold, and transported. Yaa Gyasi uses these locations to show how the slave trade was not isolated to coastal forts but penetrated deep into African society, corrupting relationships and communities.
Tafo was an important settlement in the Gold Coast interior, serving as a nexus for trade routes connecting to Cape Coast. Merchants, both African and European, used such posts to distribute goods and coordinate the enslaved people trade. The settlement reflected the complex commercial networks that made the Atlantic slave trade possible.
Tafo remains a small town in Ghana's Ashanti Region. It retains some historical structures and family compounds, though much of its colonial-era commercial infrastructure has been lost. The town represents the interior settlements that connected coast to hinterland.
Accra, Ghana — Coastal Communities Pre-Colonial to Present
Though not directly featured, the Ga fishing communities around Accra represent the coastal African societies affected by the slave trade and colonialism. These communities, like the Ga, existed before European arrival and maintained their own forms of slavery and social hierarchy, but were dramatically transformed by European demand for enslaved labor. Yaa Gyasi's novel implicitly includes such communities in its exploration of how the transatlantic slave trade was not an external imposition but involved African participation and internal transformation.
The Ga people of the Accra region were fishermen and traders who interacted with European merchants beginning in the 15th century. Jamestown Akanyin developed as a fishing settlement with strong cultural traditions. The Ga engaged in both long-distance trade and fishing, and many participated in the enslaved people trade.
Jamestown Akanyin remains an active fishing community with traditional fish smoking and drying operations. The neighborhood retains historic fishing families and maritime traditions. It is increasingly affected by tourism and modernization but maintains cultural identity.
Visit: Jamestown Community (touring available through guides) (tour)
Elmina, Ghana — The First European Fort in Sub-Saharan Africa
Elmina Castle, though not the primary focus of Homegoing, represents the broader system of European forts that facilitated the slave trade along the Gold Coast. Built before Cape Coast Castle, Elmina is an earlier expression of the infrastructure that enabled millions of Africans to be enslaved. Yaa Gyasi's meditation on slavery includes understanding the architecture, the systems, the economic machinery that made slavery possible. Elmina exemplifies the permanence and scale of European commitment to the trade.
Elmina Castle (São Jorge da Mina) was built by the Portuguese in 1482 and is the oldest European fortress in sub-Saharan Africa. It initially traded in gold but became a major hub for the enslaved people trade. The castle contains dungeons, torture chambers, and housed Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders across centuries. Over 30 million Africans are estimated to have passed through Elmina during its 400+ years as a slave trade center.
Elmina Castle is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and museum operated by Ghana's heritage authority. It is one of West Africa's most visited heritage sites, with tours of the dungeons, Door of No Return, and detailed exhibitions on the castle's history and the slave trade.
Visit: Elmina Castle Museum (historic site)
More by Yaa Gyasi: Transcendent Kingdom locations map · All Yaa Gyasi books