Gyasi sometimes reminds me of other writers who’ve addressed the immigrant experience in America — Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li in particular — but less because of her themes than her meticulous style, as when Gifty says of her lab partner: “It embarrassed me to know that I would have been embarrassed to talk about Nana’s addiction with Han,” a sentence whose awkwardness is in the service of its emotional precision. I have to use muscle power to constantly force the book open enough to read it. BOOK REVIEW Faith and fury in ‘Transcendent Kingdom’ ... TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM. See the full list. Gifty’s mother appears in all her complexity, her face turned to the wall, “courting death, practicing for it, even,” and at the same time as an unbending protector, washing the vomit off her detoxing son in the bathtub, telling him that everything will be all right. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. In place of the lyricism of her first novel, Gyasi gives us sentences like this one, where the grace comes from rhythm rather than melody: “I loved Alabama in the evenings, when everything got still and lazy and beautiful, when the sky felt full, fat with bugs.” The transcendent kingdom of this Ghanaian, Southern, American novel is finally not a Christian or a scientific one, but the one that two women create by surviving a hostile environment, and maintaining their primal connection to each other. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Transcendent Kingdom is a stunning exploration of a family and faith, of self and science. TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM. Except when Gifty refers to her mother as “the Black Mamba” — in a childhood journal where each entry is addressed to God — she remains unnamed, but she is the book’s focus and heart. But what she does with the hard stuff is turn her pain into something concrete. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi available in Hardcover on Powells.com, also read synopsis and reviews. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, Knopf, 2020, $27.00, 288 pages. There’s no device to combat the brutal frost of American racism, though, and it touches Gifty and her family everywhere they go. study of schizophrenics in India, Ghana and California, Ghanaian-American short-story writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. While her father flees the country in humiliation, and her brother and mother take more interior flights, Gifty responds to America’s challenges with success, deciding that “I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.” To her classmates, professors and even her romantic partners, this dazzling performance is sometimes inscrutable; unfortunately for the reader, Gyasi sometimes obscures Gifty from us as well. Gifty, who prefers evidence to anecdote, cites a study of schizophrenics in India, Ghana and California; while the Indian and Ghanaian subjects hear benevolent voices, sometimes those of friends and family members, the Californian schizophrenics are “bombarded by harsh, hate-filled voices, by violence, intrusion.” It’s not, as Gifty’s mother suggests, that mental illness is an invention of the toxic West, but that the way it’s experienced on either side of the ocean is different, depending on the surrounding culture. Although Nana’s addiction is reflected in his sister’s scientific work, it’s the rich portrait of their mother — a woman who pitches between stoicism and intense vulnerability — that constitutes the novel’s most rewarding experiment. Book binding was poor quality. When a book is purchased through one of our reviews, round-ups (etc.) Laura Jaye Cramer. This book is the follow-up novel to Homegoing, Gyasi’s debut novel.And while Homegoing is not required reading for Transcendent Kingdom, I absolutely want to read it after reading this book. Review by Lauren Bufferd September 2020 Yaa Gyasi’s second novel, Transcendent Kingdom , takes us deep into the heart of one woman’s struggle to make sense of her life and family. Transcendent Kingdom is Gyasi’s second novel. Gifty arrives as an undergraduate at Harvard, where the combination of New England weather and her grief over her brother leads her to the university’s mental health services, to request a lamp for treating seasonal depression. Author interviews, book reviews and lively book commentary are found here. Yaa Gyasi's (pronounced "yah jessie") Transcendent Kingdom is, among other things, a meditation on science and religion. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. “I’m pretty, right?” Gifty asks her. Instead, Gyasi builds her characters scientifically, observation by observation, in the same way that her narrator builds her Ph.D. thesis experiment — a study of reward-seeking behavior in mice that self-consciously mirrors her brother Nana’s struggle with opioids. Gifty’s relationships with men are similarly sketchy. It just seemed to speak on addiction, mental illness, religion and familial constructs. Gifty and her middle-school classmates submerged an egg in various solutions, then watched as it was denuded of its shell, swelling and shriveling, changing shape and color. Some readers of “Transcendent Kingdom” may miss the romantic sweep of that novel and the momentum Gyasi achieved by leaping a generation and a continent every few chapters. It’s hard to care what happens next when the shadow of sorrow and bitterness never retreats. This page works best with JavaScript. The story of addiction is much better told in books that are actually non fiction. For Gifty it’s a “spiritual wound” to worship with people who believe that Nana’s addiction is unsurprising because “their kind does seem to have a taste for drugs” (in fact, a doctor casually prescribed OxyContin for a basketball injury); that Nana had a chance at a bright future only through sports; that if an African village hasn’t received Christian teachings, its residents are damned to hell. “I didn’t want to be thought of as a woman in science, a Black woman in science,” Gifty thinks early in the novel; she is no more interested in the “immigrant cliché” of the academically successful child whose striving parents sweat blood for her success than Gyasi is in a novel that pits the home culture against the outside world to see which one wins out. Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom is a study of grief and loss and its effects in different forms. Her second book, TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM, is an entirely new approach, yet she shines equally as bright, if not brighter, demonstrating her impressive range and profound skill as a storyteller. Exquisitely written and emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasís phenomenal debut. Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought The exception is the one with her lab partner, Han, who comes alive through small details, like the way his ears redden every time he and Gifty talk about anything more emotionally fraught than the behavior of the mice in her experiment. Onto another book but not one recommended by Jenna Bush Hager . The negative themes are not counterbalanced with any positive ones so it’s hard to feel drawn in. The book is well-written and the characters are interesting. Transcendent Kingdom explores an immigrant neuroscientist’s complicated relationship with evangelical Christianity. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut. In “Transcendent Kingdom,” Yaa Gyasi builds her characters scientifically, observation by observation, in the same way that her narrator builds her Ph.D. thesis experiment — a study of reward-seeking behavior in mice. Indeed none of the characters resonate — the mother is the, Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2020. this book is difficult to read because the printing goes too close to the gutter or center of the book. Disabling it will result in some disabled or missing features. “At times, my life now feels so at odds with the religious teachings of my childhood that I wonder what the little girl I once was would think of the woman I’ve become.” (161) Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. [ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of the month. Intended to demonstrate osmosis, the experiment, Gifty reflects later, suggested the central question about her and her mother: “Are we going to be OK?”. I loved Homegoing and was so excited to read this. Wanted to love it, but really don’t. About 3/4 through and not particularly interested in finishing... 4,253 global ratings | 230 global reviews, Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2020. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. However it makes for an extremely tedious read. A family in isolation is a kind of science experiment. Finding it a tedious slog actually, without particularly compelling characters or storyline. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi completely changed that trend for me! You can still see all customer reviews for the product. Gyasi’s style here is especially striking given the time-traveling fireworks of her enormously successful debut, “Homegoing” (2016), an examination of the effects of African, British and American slavery on one Ghanaian family over three centuries. Gifty has endured more than her fair share. “A matter-of-fact kind of woman, not a cruel woman, exactly, but something quite close to cruel,” Gifty calls her, and yet when Nana refuses to get off the team bus at a soccer game that their mother has missed work and a day’s pay to attend, she doesn’t scold him, but quietly takes the children home and boxes up the expensive gear. Whereas Homegoing had a linear timeline, Transcendent Kingdom flashes forward and backward in time. ‘After the Last Border’ by Jessica Goudeau. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, See all details for Transcendent Kingdom: A novel. Sep 30 REVIEW : Transcendent Kingdom / Yaa Gyasi. Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2020. so many quotable lines that it was hard to just choose one, but here it is: Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2020. While Gifty shares some biography with Marjorie, a character in “Homegoing” — both grow up in Huntsville, Ala., and encounter a “crazy” person on a trip to Ghana — the picture of mental illness in “Transcendent Kingdom” is darker and more nuanced. Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2020. She saw him try to shrink to size, his long, proud back hunched as he walked with my mother through the Walmart, where he was accused of stealing three times in four months.”, [ Read an excerpt from “Transcendent Kingdom.” ]. TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression, addiction and grief --- a novel about faith, science, religion and love. A study we all need right now. Content includes books from bestselling, midlist and debut authors. It’s nicely written but the story of a woman who worked in a science laboratory who took care of her mentally ill mother and mourned for her dead brother was dull. Gifty is trying to combat the incomprehensibleness of the tragedies she’s experienced with an obsessive dedication to the concrete logic of science. What a flight! By Yaa Gyasi. I don’t even know what kind of person Gifty is beyond being 1)devastated by the death of her brother, and 2)burnt out by caring for her mother who suffers from near-paralyzing depression. History is always with us it seemed to say. Very dull indeed. The moment is emblematic of her mother’s fierce love, which requires a corresponding step toward self-love from her daughter. In one of the novel’s most beautiful scenes, Gifty’s mother puts on makeup before going to one of several jobs. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut. It is fascinating to read about Gifty’s research and how it results from her feelings of grief and confusion with regard to her beloved brother. We are all broken in our own way and this book shows you. Don’t understand why anyone would recommend this book I found it boring and I wasn’t interested in the main character in the Least bit. However, this cursory description doesn't do justice to the full contents of the novel any more than the scientific method encompasses the human quest for knowledge, or than the practice of prayer explains the human impulse to seek guidance from a higher power. I wasn't very impressed by this book. Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2020, HOMEGOING was unique not in its insights particularly but in its structure and wide canvas. Her mother pulls her in front of the mirror and says in Twi: “Look what God made. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut. ]. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut. As in the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or the Ghanaian-American short-story writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the African immigrants in this novel exist at a certain remove from American racism, victims but also outsiders, marveling at the peculiar blindnesses of the locals. ISBN-13: 9780525658184 Summary Yaa Gyasí's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. They grow across the course of the novel. If “Homegoing” progressed in more or less linear fashion, in this book narrative time is more relative; like one of those rubber balls attached to a paddle, it rebounds between Gifty’s childhood and her brother’s death by overdose, her elite education and her mother’s suicidal depressions. Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2020. Yaa Gyasi’s beautiful novel embraces faith that changes and grows: A review of Transcendent Kingdom Gifty is a brilliant neuroscience grad student trying to isolate and study addiction in the brain, who is tasked with taking care of her depressed mother when she stops getting out of bed. An learn to trust the beauty in that. For most of the novel, Gyasi refuses to give Gifty’s mother’s depression a narrative arc, instead showing us the never-ending waiting that relatives of depressives are forced to endure. Homegoing was one of the best books I've read in a while. Her mother refuses to acknowledge its effects on her or her husband, but Gifty knows “she’d seen how America changed around big Black men. When Gifty has a romantic relationship with another girl in college, she muses, “We had kissed and a little more, but I couldn’t define it and Anne didn’t care to.” It’s nice that a same-sex relationship doesn’t occasion conflict the way it once did in American fiction — but it’s hard to imagine that the child of evangelical Ghanaian immigrants wouldn’t have at least some internal dialogue on the subject, whether ambivalent or defiant.