IN THE NOVEL Transcendent Kingdom, Gifty is a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Stanford University, aiming to identify the neural pathways that suppress reward-seeking behavior. She is at the lab trying to keep two mice from tearing each other apart when her mother’s pastor calls. Gifty’s mother is sick, severely depressed ever since her son, Gifty’s brother Nana, died of a heroin overdose. Now, years later, Gifty wants nothing more than to bring her mother back to life.
In her second book, author Yaa Gyasi continues to grapple with familial loss and inheritance. But while her debut novel Homegoing examined the legacy of slavery, Transcendent Kingdom follows a young woman as she recalls her immigrant family’s triumphs alongside their devastating fight with depression and addiction. Through her methodical (scientific, spiritual, and philosophical) inquiry, Gifty tries to keep their memories alive.
What happens when the past haunts and overwhelms the present? At 28, Gifty’s life is lonely lab work and rumination, a mother unresponsive save for her hum, a father so distant he is not called by name. Even when Gifty is silent, the past reverberates loudly in her relationships. If she can find answers to her research questions, perhaps one day someone could be saved from the throes of addiction. But who will save her?
Answers to experiments are not enough. She reaches back to a time when she wanted above all to be “good” because “goodness” promised reward: when she addressed her letters to God, when she attempted to “pray without ceasing,” when her white neighbors celebrated her brother’s prowess on the field, when the same neighbors revealed their faith was exclusionary, when she walked up to the altar and experienced the euphoria of salvation, when her brother was not only alive but thriving.
As she watches her mother in bed, Gifty contemplates the mysteries of faith, God, and relationships. What is prayer? What happens to Lazarus after Jesus brings him back to life? If a dead man could be called back to life, then why can't a mother rise from bed? “When it came to God,” Gifty says. “I could not give a straight answer. I had not been able to give a straight answer since the day Nana died. ... And yet. How to explain that quiver? How to explain that sure-footed knowledge of his presence in my heart?”
While preparing to host her ailing mother, Gifty realizes that she does not own a Bible and decides to get one because “it nagged at me to think of her reaching for one and not being able to find it.” Later, she reflects on how the Greek Logos lends new meaning to John 1: “In the beginning, there was an idea, a premise; there was a question.”
In Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi shows that in the darkness of loss, there can be great meaning in the searching.
Elinam Agbo earned an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. Born in Ghana, she grew up in the U.S. Midwest.
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