Transcendant Kingdom

Incredible storytelling, an intimate look at the opioid epidemic, and a portrait of a Ghanian immigrant family in the U.S.—Transcendent Kingdom revolves tightly around the main character, Gifty, and her quest to make sense of the world after her brother’s overdose. The narrative is made up of her thoughts and snippets of her journal entries from childhood.. The reverberating effects of addiction and overdose, the shame of it, and the way it tangles with racism were so raw.

As Gifty grows up she tries to understand the ways her experiences have shaped her and her motivations. Gyasi moves back and forth through time, seeking to establish a causal relationship between events in Gifty’s life. The timeline was very well executed.

I found Gifty’s experiences with Christianity really compelling. She examines the faith of her childhood, but then begins to shed it, moving instead toward science and research as ways to explain the world. It was interesting to witness her think about the functions of religion and science, and what faith in each of them means? Gyasi worked a lot of interesting scientific research into the narrative, which was just cool.

Transcendent Kingdom felt like a place where Gyasi could work out some big questions about life and humanity and why we do what we do? Yes, there were times it felt a little underdeveloped, but nobody has answers for these questions! She masterfully combines this sense of the futile with a brilliant optimism: the answers are out there and we will find them, even though they feel unreachable. I am thankful this novel asked me to believe in something bigger, something higher.