Hi, it's La Le here. Before we get into this week's episode, I wanted to give a heads up that we're doing another travel FAQ in a few weeks' time.

So, if you have a burning question about travel right now, which I suspect quite a few people do, send us an Instagram DM either at at Women Who Travel at La Le Hannah or at Oh Ohay Their Mayor or email us at Women Who Travel at

C&Travel.com. Thanks a lot.

Hi, everyone. This is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nowst Traveler. I'm Meredith Carey, and

with me, as always, is my co-host,

Bala Eric Hobleu. Hello. In this week's episode, we're chatting with Brooklyn-based author

Yaa Jessie, whose first novel, Homegoing, which charts the stories of two family bloodlines

beginning in 18th century Ghana and ending in the present day, won a slew of awards, including

the Penn Hemingway in 2017. It's a book we've talked about on the present day, won a slew of awards, including the Penn Hemingway in 2017.

It's a book we've talked about on the podcast before, and we've been lucky enough to spend the past

few days absorbed in her second novel, Transcendant Kingdom, a deeply layered story about a

Ghanaian family living in Alabama. It's out this week, and we are so excited to talk about it.

Thanks for joining us, yeah.

Thank you for having me. So to kick things off, I'm going to ask a question that I'm sure

you're still probably trying to figure out the answer to, but both of us loved Homegoing very much

and have talked about it, as we said on the podcast before.

And to me, Homegoing almost felt like a collection of short stories that were threaded together,

whereas Transcendent Kingdom mostly stays with the same characters and places throughout.

How did those writing processes differ for you?

Yeah, I think the process for homegoing was so much more tight in that I almost

approached it kind of mathematically. I knew that I wanted to cover a certain amount of years

and to do that I kind of broke down how many years within each character's life

...