Sunday, January 10, 2021

Beautifully Living Between Faith and Science: A Review of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent KingdomTranscendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Contemporary literary fiction is not typically my thing as I find it hard to relate to the plot, characters, and storylines. It also doesn’t help that I have found few very satisfying endings in recent contemporary literary fiction. That said, I was absolutely floored by this book. Ms. Gyasi has written an incredible book about faith, addiction, and grief about an African immigrant family living in the United States.

Set in the present, but also flashing back to the past, this book is told from the first-person perspective of Gifty, a young Ghanaian immigrant to the United States, and her family which includes her mother, father (known as the Chin Chin Man), and her older brother Nana. In the present, Gifty is a neuroscience researcher in California studying addiction in rats, but her story frequently flashes back to her childhood growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, and the evangelical church she and her family grew up in as well as her college days where she first experiences people who do not share her childhood beliefs. If this sounds like another version of the movie “God’s Not Dead,” don’t be afraid. Ms. Gyasi handles Gifty’s struggles over faith and science in an amazing way that doesn’t go for easy answers in favor of one side or the other. As Gifty and her family try to process an unbearable grief, Ms. Gyasi imbues her characters with a great deal of depth, humanity, and compassion. Even the ending, which often gets reduced into head-scratching or saccharine ways in other contemporary literary fiction works I have read, felt perfect for this story. It’s soft, but again does not end in an easy, black-and-white kind of way.

I honestly have nothing against the writing in this book. The characters are great, the story and inner struggles are amazing, and the ending is perfectly soft. Whether you are a fan of contemporary literary fiction or not, I highly recommend this book to you.

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