What is the significance of beginning the novel with Effia and ending with a reunion between Marjorie and Marcus? How does this structural decision impact the novel’s organization? What impressions does it leave on the reader?

The novel’s ending brings the story full circle, back to the place where Effia’s and Esi’s stories diverged and whence Esi’s descendants departed for America. Because Effia is married to a white European, their descendants are also pulled into the colonizers’ world. Collins was also responsible for the enslavement of Efi and her daughter Ness. Beginning with Ness’s son Kojo, however, the American descendants began once again to experience freedom, which finally culminated in Marcus’s being ability to earn a university education. While the coincidence of Effia’s descendant, Marjorie, also becoming a student at Stanford strains credulity, it works well as a plot device to tie the threads and remind the reader of the limited realism of the author’s approach. The journey of Marjorie and Marcus not only to Ghana but specifically to the infamous Cape Coast Castle is a powerful symbol of unity of the two sisters’ families and of Africa and America.