Transcendent Kingdom
By Yaa Gyasi
★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
264 pages
What’s it about?
Gifty is sixth-year PhD candidate at Stanford University School of Medicine studying neuroscience. Her interest is in reward seeking behavior and addiction. Alternating between the past and the present this is a story of a family grappling with the many facets of mental health.
What did it make me think about?
I loved Gifty! What a great character. She was so complicated, and yet so refreshing. "He smiled at me, and I wanted to slap the smile off his face, but I wanted other things more."
Should I read it?
I highly recommend this book. It is a family story first- but it also sheds light on addiction, depression, religion, and being an immigrant in the Deep South. What a combination...
A passage I marked
But this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false. I used to see the world thought a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.
