Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • The CBR Team
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us

Open Registration for CBR13 ends Jan. 31! Sign Up Today!

> FAQ Home
> Genre: Fiction > Thoughtful meditation on science, faith and family

Thoughtful meditation on science, faith and family

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

December 30, 2020 by Wanderlustful Leave a Comment

Yaa Gyasi is best known for her critically acclaimed first novel, Homegoing.  Unlike Homegoing, which I gather has a broad sweep in terms in geography and time (its in my TBR pile!), Transcendent Kingdom is narrowly focused on one woman, Gifty, in her adolescent to early adult years.  Although the scope of the novel expands a little to include Gifty’s immediate family and a few friends, the novel remains focused on her experiences with these additional cast members- we see them through her eyes.

We meet Gifty in the present day, as she is finishing a PhD in neuroscience.  She is interested in how addiction affects the brain, an areas of study that she says she became interested in because it was ‘hard’ and she needed to prove that to herself that she could do it.  What goes unrecognized is how her neuroscience specialty overlaps with losing her brother to a drug overdose when she was a child. The plot also feels spare, which seems fitting for an introspective scientist main character: Gifty is trying ‘fix’ her severely depressed mother who has come to stay with her, working through her feelings towards her deceased brother and occasionally trying to make connections with friends/romantic partners.  There are no big twists- its just not that kind of novel.

For all use of descriptors like ‘narrow’ and ‘sparse’, the themes that Gyasi is exploring- mental illness, family, personal connection, race and faith- are broad.  In backstory that mirrors Gyasi’s own, Gifty and her family moved from Ghana to Alabama when she was young.  To give them structure in their new country, and also because of her own faith, Gifty’s mother insists that the family go to church every Sunday, and that religion play an important role in their new American lives.  With limited knowledge about America’s racial divides, her mother picks a white church where they are the only black family.  The racist attitudes and comments made by the other (white) members of the  congregation are internalized by the child Gifty and she only interrogates them as she grows older.  At the same time as the adult Gifty is trying to fit these disparate things- racism and faith- together, she is also interrogating how her faith fits with her career in science and her research area in particular. There are no easy answers except to say that her faith is more resilient and accommodating than my heathen soul would have suspected.

Trying to sum up my feelings on this one is difficult- the slow moving plot didn’t make it a page turner, and the themes that it explores are uncomfortable. At the same time, the debates that Gifty is having with herself are important and interesting ones, and my feeling on finishing was actually one of comfort.  Small steps, small lives, moving slowly towards healing felt reassuring.

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: faith, Race, science, transcendent kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

Wanderlustful's CBR12 Review No:63 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: faith, Race, science, transcendent kingdom, Yaa Gyasi ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

About Wanderlustful

CBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR 6

Lawyer by day, voracious reader by night. So many books, so little time! View Wanderlustful's reviews»

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • Bothari43 on If you are getting another cat, read this book. Heck, if you have a cat, get this book.I am now retroactively mad at you that you did not introduce Ponyo in our CBR zoom call last weekend. How could you deprive us...
  • wicherwill on Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.It kept getting billed as lesbian necromancers, to a degree that I felt sort of...bait and switched. (Don't get me wrong, I assume the plot...
  • Bothari43 on DUNEMe three! Also the (don't worry about it). Ha!!
  • Bothari43 on A stylish start to a trilogy filled with welcomed diversityThe book sounds good, but mostly I'm commenting to shallowly say that the cover is gorgeous! I think I've read a few too many "more...
  • Emmalita on Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.I do like my books with queer rep to have happy endings, but I generally have to look to romance for that.
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in