Gyasi, Yaa. Transcendent Kingdom. Knopf Doubleday, 2020.
When is the last time you found a new favorite author? Ever since I was a kid, I have always had my favorites and tried to read all of their work. As soon as I read Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing, I was eager to read more. I’m not sorry that I was late to the table finding her work either, that means I won’t have to wait very long for her next novel.
Transcendent Kingdom is different from Homegoing because Homegoing was an epic saga of slavery and freedom that followed the descendants of two sisters, one who stayed behind in Ghana and the other who was sold into slavery to America. Instead, Transcendent Kingdom is written memoir style about a young girl, Gifty, her parents and her brother, Nana. Gifty’s parents and brother are immigrants from Ghana and Gifty is born in the United States.
There are similarities between the novels. Both Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom follow immigrants from Ghana like Gyasi and her family. Also, like Homegoing, the young male in Transcendent Kingdom has a problem with addiction. In Homegoing, most of the Ghanaian patriarchs were strong and very connected to their offspring and wives, while in Transcendent Kingdom, her father, the Chin Chin Man, is a fraternal disappointment.
A Very Cool Aspect
In Transcendent Kingdom Gifty’s mom, who works as a home healthcare provider, is a devoted member of the First Assemblies of God church in Alabama while Gifty is a sixth year PhD candidate of neuroscience at Stanford Medical School who feels abandoned by God. Gifty has struggled with her relationship with God for years and marvels at her mother’s steadfast faith. The novel has enough God seeking in it to make me want to categorize it at “Catholic.” Not because the Catholic faith every comes up, but because it is infused with seeking Him.
I would imagine that the novel would appeal to atheists who have turned away from God as much as it appeals to me as someone who has a strong faith. I have had times in my life when I, like Gifty, have felt that God was far away from me. The first time was when a close friend of ours, at the age of 34, was killed by a drunk driver and the second time was when my daughter’s first son died. Both times, I identified with Jesus on the cross as he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). Gifty’s reaction to abandonment and death and her mom’s reaction are very different. In the end, Gifty makes peace with God in a very different way than her mother does.
Honestly, throughout the story, I kept wondering what would happen if Gifty had discovered the Catholic faith. One of the issues that Gifty has with her faith is that people tend to change the narrative to suit themselves. We all know that the Catholic church, while often accused of a lot, is rarely accused of changing on a whim! There were times when I would read of Gifty’s struggles and think, “Won’t some Catholic apologist show up and lead her home?”
A Talented Storyteller
I really love that the style of storytelling is so different from that of Homegoing. As a budding writer, I can’t help thinking about the author and her writing process when I am reading. Because I read the two books back to back, I also couldn’t help comparing the style of the two books. That’s the English major in me, I’m afraid. I know for a lot of people, even thinking about thinking about the writing process gets in the way of the story, but for me, it enhances it. As soon as I finished, I went right back to the beginning to re-read it.
The story opens with Gifty reminiscing about her mother who suffered severe, bed-ridden depression and how Gifty was sent to live with an aunt in Ghana the first time her mother was severely depressed. The first 64 words of the book are pretty impressive in the way she manages to tell us that 1) this is a memory 2) her mom was severely depressed twice in her lifetime and 3) that she was a graduate student at the time and 4) that she was sent to Ghana when she was a young child the first time her mother was depressed.
In the second chapter, we learn about the work that Gifty is doing trying to understand addiction. After that, everything unfolds beautifully. Gifty shares her childhood journals which are written as letters to God as she tries to understand why her father has abandoned the family and later why her brother has succumbed to addiction.
While the narrative expertly weaves together her life as a grad student and her childhood, it is always character driven and so smooth. There are none of the clunky surprises tossed in by authors to keep a reader hooked. In Transcendent Kingdom, the reader is mesmerized by how Gyasi allows Gifty to come to terms with her feelings about her mother, father, brother, and her own reaction to the events of her life.
Every time Gifty learns something new about herself, the reader hasn’t anticipated it for very long. I hate when characters are denser than I am! Gifty is smart, she figures herself out pretty quickly. The first four chapters are focused on Gifty dealing with her mom’s depression while trying to finish up her graduate project. By the fifth chapter, Gifty has begun to reminisce about her childhood when she was so young, her only “memories” are the ones that others tell her about. She resurfaces in the lab long enough between memories to help the reader remember that she is trying to figure out her feelings about her mother.
Enjoy!
I’m pretty sure you will love Gifty and her personal journey in Transcendent Kingdom. Grab a copy and let me know if you agree.
Do you have a favorite author whose books you always love? I have so many. I am one of those people who thinks I need to read all the books! How about you?