Title: Transcendent Kingdom
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Fiction, Literary Fiction, African Literature
Year of Publication: 2020
Date of Publication: September 1, 2020
Pages: 288
ISBN-10: 0525658181
ISBN-13: 978-0525658184
Audiobook Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Summary of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscientist. Gifty is raised in Alabama and is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on subjects closely connected to her family’s history and experiences.
When Gifty was young, her father who never quite felt like he was living while in America, travelled to Ghana to visit his brother and decided not to return to his family in America. He kept promising to return but never did. Gifty’s mother was left to take on the responsibility of caring for her and her brother, Nana.
“Soon, soon, soon.”— Gifty reflecting on the response her father would give when asked when he would be returning to America
Nana was very a talented athlete but was deeply affected by their father’s absence. He struggled with addiction and eventually died of a drug overdose during high school. Gift’s mother on the other hand, battles depression.
“…there used to be four of us, then three, two. When my mother goes, whether by choice or not, there will be only one.”— Gifty reflecting on how her family has changed over the years
At Stanford, Gifty’s research focuses on the brain’s reward systems and she is trying to find out what drives addiction and why people continue engaging in behaviors they know to be harmful. By examining these patterns, she seeks to understand the connections between pleasure, pain, and the ways the brain processes reward and reinforcement.
“…could this science work on the people who need it the most? Could it get a brother to set down a needle? Could it get a mother out of bed?”— Gifty’s reflections
Parts of the novel address Gifty’s faith and belief and what led her to start questioning religion as a whole. We learn about her experiences with her church in Alabama and also when she visited Ghana briefly.
“That gossip was as juicy as a peach. My congregation got fat on it, but when Mary got married we starved…If Mary’s pregnancy was a peach, then Nana had been a feast.”— Gifty’s reflections about the church
Other parts of novel look at her science and Gifty’s journey to understand the suffering that has plagued her family. It also looks at Gifty’s personal relationships, what holds her back, and her practical way of thinking about issues.
“Whenever I listened to his friends speak about issues like prison reform, climate change, the opioid epidemic, in the simultaneously intelligent but utterly vacuous way of people who think it’s important simply to weigh in, to have an opinion, I would bristle. I would think, What is the point of all this talk? What problems do we solve by identifying problems, circling them?”— Gifty’s reflections
Main Plot & Characters
- Gifty: The narrator and protagonist. Much of the novel follows her reflections on life.
- Gifty’s Mother: Known in the novel simply as Mother. She is a very religious woman who immigrated from Ghana to Alabama.
- Nana: He was Gifty’s older brother. He was a gifted high school athlete whose opioid addiction eventually leads to his death. His life and loss profoundly shape Gifty.
- The Chin-chin Man: Gifty’s father. He returns to Ghana when Gifty is young, leaving the family. Gifty calls him this nickname because he always used to ask her grand mother for achomo (a Ghanian snack) but he would call it chin-chin like Nigerian’s do.
- Anne: She is Gifty’s friend who kept waiting for her to open up.
- Han: Gifty’s lab mate at Stanford.
- Raymond: He is Gifty’s boyfriend and the son of a pastor. Raymond is highly educated and a Ph.D. candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
- Katherine: She works in Gifty’s lab and is a postdoc. Katherine is married and she wanted to be Gifty’s friend.
Writing Style
Yaa Gyasi tells the story using Gifty’s reflections. Parts of the story are told in the present times while others are about her memories of her childhood. The first thing you would notice is that the characters feel like real people. For example, even though Gifty was raised in a very religious home, she now wrestles with questions about God’s existence. This struggle is further complicated by Gifty’s role as a scientist, as she tries to reconcile her personal doubts with the analytical nature of her profession.
“‘Gifty,’ she said as I set the bowl of koko down. ‘Do you still pray?’ … ‘No,’ I answered.”.”— Gifty’s conversation with her mother.
Memorable Quotes
- “Though I had done this millions of times, it still awed me to see a brain. To know that I could only understand this little organ inside this one tiny mouse, that understanding still wouldn’t speak to the full intricacy of the comparable organ inside my own head.”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “I think when people heard about my brother they assumed that I had gone into neuroscience out of a sense of duty to him, but the truth is I’d started this work not because I wanted to help people but because it seemed like the hardest thing you could do, and I wanted to do the hardest thing. I wanted to flay any mental weakness off my body…”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “America was so expensive, barrenness was its own kind of blessing.”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “…memories of people you hardly know are often permitted a kind of pleasantness in their absence. It’s those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged.”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “But the memory lingered, the lesson I have never quite being able to shake: that I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “Because I still have so much shame. I’m full to the brim with it. I’m spilling over.”— Gifty‘s reflections
- “Nothing teaches you the true nature of your friendships like a sudden death, worse still, a death that’s shrouded in shame. No one knew how to talk to us, and so they didn’t even try.”— Gifty’s reflections about how her community and friends treated her and her mother after Nana’s death
Final Thoughts on Transcendent Kingdom
The novel sparks conversations about mental health, family, and what it is like for immigrants and their generations living in America. Transcendent Kingdom was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
What are your thoughts on this book? Have you had a chance to read it? Let us know in the comments!
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