Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing

Struck by these passages from Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi:

A mother, Willie, reflects on a hard past with her young son, Carson: "The sweetness of the smile was bitter too, for it reminded Willie of the days of his endless crying. The days when there was no one in the world except for the two of them, and she was not enough for him. She was barely enough for herself."

As an alienation sets in between Willie and her husband Robert: "Even on that first day she'd gone to play with him, even as she pushed him, even as he fell, Robert had always kept his eyes steadily, almost ravenous lyrics, on hers."(208)

"The Morris's had been in New York since before the Great Migration, but they ate as though the South was a place in their kitchen instead of one that was miles and miles away."(209)