Transcendent Kingdom

Author:

Yaa Gyasi is a very successful, relatively “new” author as this is her second novel. Homegoing was published in 2016 as Gyasi’s first novel and she received a seven-figure paycheck before the book was even released. Homegoing went on to earn multiple awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award and the American Book Award. Transcenden Kingdom was published in 2020 and has been very favorably reviewed by USA Today, Chicago Review of Books, and The New Republic. While Gyasi makes it seem so easy, she states that she was not the most outgoing child, partly due to her and her family’s experience of immigrating to the US from Ghana, where she was born. She says that books and her brothers were her closest friend growing up. She submitted the first story she wrote to the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest and received back a certificate of achievement signed by famous actor LeVar Burton. Later, she attended Stanford University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts as well as the University of Iowa where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.

Learn More about Yaa Gyasi

Three words to describe this read:

Reconciliatory- One of the reasons I liked this book so much was because it compared the main character’s upbringing to her views as an adult and demonstrated the struggle in having to reconcile those differences.

Heavy- This book tackles a lot of serious topics in an approachable manner using the characters, specifically Gifty. While they may not be the most fun topics, the book is engaging and easy to follow.

Mysterious- By the end of the book, you feel that you know Gifty and her family so well and then you remember that you don’t even know their full names. I’m assuming that Gifty and Nana and the nicknames of the children, her dad only goes by his nickname, and her mom is never named either.

Quote:

“I think we’re made out of stardust and God made the stars.”

I related a lot to the main character in this book, Gifty. She was raised religious and later became a neuroscientist so as an adult, she had to reconcile the beliefs that she was taught as a child and the things she learned as an adult. This quote encompassed the resolution of that struggle in a way that I can agree with. While most people would say that a person has to choose between religion and science, I like the idea that both can be true.