Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“And it wasn’t fair. That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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In one word: Grieving Cannonball Read Bingo: Uncannon I picked this for uncannon because Gyasi is giving new life to a story that we’ve seen many times over from the Eurocentric white perspective. There have been plenty of books about drug addiction (even specifically about Oxycontin and the havoc it is wreaking in America), mental illness, the crossroads of science and religion in academia, and an overachieving character trying to fix her heart by using her head. She is taking very familiar tropes and given […]

A sweeping epic of two families that I could not put down

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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BINGO – Home Summary: Homegoing follows multiple generations of families that start in 17th century Ghana and track all the way through modern day. Homegoing follows a linear plot structure but each chapter switches from family to family and from one generation to the next. This novel is sweeping in its scope. The culmination of the two stories lines comes together in an expected way but one that is still works. Most vignettes of the families are about finding one’s home or space, trying to […]

“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves.”

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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I am finally getting around to read my second Cannonball Read book exchange gift book this year from Bonnie (thanks Bonnie!) I don’t know what took me so dang long because I loved the first book she gave me, Red White and Royal Blue, and it wasn’t even on my radar to read, and neither was Homegoing and I should have known that Bonnie knows her book business and BOY. DOES. SHE. Homegoing is definitely in my top books of the year, and one I’m […]

A powerful story of belief, grief, and belonging

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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Gifty is the daughter of two Ghanaian immigrants: her mother, a depressive woman who turns to American Evangelical Christianity for a respite from life, and her father, a man who abandons his family to return to his home in Ghana. Gifty has a brother: an athlete who struggles with addiction. Throughout the novel, Gifty bounces from memory to memory as she completes her doctoral work at Stanford in neurology and takes care of her mother. Each memory reveals layer after layer of who Gifty is […]

“History is storytelling”

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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This was a novel I had wanted to read when it was first published in 2016. Of course, that year was the year of a dissertation defense and a cross-country move and a new job, so by the time I had a chance to breathe, Homegoing had slipped down my list, supplanted by other novels. But then I received Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi’s sophomore novel, in a book subscription box, and I felt like maybe, just maybe, I ought to read her debut before tackling this new one. […]

I’ve run out of adjectives

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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I don’t know if I have enough words to describe the way I love Yaa Gyasi’s writing. I have given copies of her first book,  Homegoing, to every reader that I know. Her second book, Transcendent Kingdom, is at first glance very different but deals with many similar themes. Transcendent Kingdom is told by Gifty, a neuroscientist researching addictive behavior in mice. She’s brilliant, a dedicated scientist at a world class institution, but also a loner who wants human connection but pushes it away at every […]



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