Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

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Novel by Yaa Gyasi

Previous book by Gyasi was a wonderful read and made me curious and excited about her next book which I had to grab. 

Like any standard immigrant fiction it dives into the complex human relationship with the mother and motherland. Other than the immigrant angle the story was a tangent to Homegoing. The protagonist in TK is a medical researcher on human psychology, neurology and brain which is enlightening for someone like me who wants to understand human behaviors. She further connects the human behavior to religion, drugs, addiction, reward and pain. The experiments on lab rats are intelligent and cruel at the same time. The entire research not so much driven by an inquisitive genius but a struggle to address the trauma of a childhood loss.

Just like the protagonist I wondered if things would have been better if they had stayed back in Ghana. But then this novel wouldn’t have been written. How does person live a life full of tragedy, no laugher, no intimacy, no relationships, and no hope. There are people who survive their tragedies putting all their faith and  happiness with the God. Who can answer the final question on human search for happiness? Will science solve the problems or is it our faith, our mind and our ability to endure. 

Despite a good read this book had some interesting words and facts that made me jump to google to find their meaning and origins. Did you know - an outside navel is called an outie. It’s comparison to a vestigial organ was interesting. I learnt the real meaning of the word Funk, and about  the diphthong accents - where Nana gets pronounced as Naaw-naaw. 

I also loved the introduction to Ghana food, culture and living, Ghanaian foods like chin chin, jollof rice, bofrot and waakye. How they look and how they eat it. I googled their pictures and read their recipes. Spicy, savory, sweet, I could feel theirs tastes on my tongue! Probably I will get to try a few. 

Finally, the brilliant lines quoted straight from the book here - https://www.goodreads.com/notes/51158488-transcendent-kingdom/2327087-neha?ref=notif_rnsp

Sharing some of my favorites: 

Whenever I listened to his friends speak about issues like prison reform, climate change, the opioid epidemic, in the simultaneously intelligent but utterly vacuous way of people who think it’s important simply to weigh in, to have an opinion, I would bristle. I would think, what is the point of all this talk? What problems do we solve by identifying problems, circling them?

and if there was hunger, it was of a different kind, the simple hunger of those who had been fed one thing but wanted another.

In high school my grades were so good that the world seemed to whittle this decision down for me: doctor. An immigrant cliché, except I lacked the overbearing parents. My mother didn’t care what I did and wouldn’t have forced me into anything.

“Inscape,” the professor of my Gerard Manley Hopkins class once said, “is that ineffable thing that makes each person and object unique. It is the sanctity of a thing.