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byronic_reader 's review for:
Transcendent Kingdom
by Yaa Gyasi
Neuroscience is a slippery, tricky concept. You will read topics after topics only to find that you haven't read enough. Neuroscience is the key to the hidden treasure that is our brain. It provides us answer to the mechanics of the various behaviours of human beings through the biological constructs of the brain. Gifty in the Transcendent Kingdom is a neuroscience student who is researching to identify and alter the neural mechanisms of pleasure-seeking. While doing so she's asking two important questions. 'Could it get a brother to set down a needle? Could it get a mother out of bed?'
Gifty is the daughter of Ghanian immigrants who grew up in Alabama. She is brought up to be religious and has followed the Bible as far as she knew. But when she finds her congregation is stereotyping her family because of her brother's drug addiction, she starts questioning everything she knows. She questions if there is a God and if he's real, why didn't he save her brother. She wonders why God didn't save her mother from depression which flares from time to time. When she couldn't find the answers through religion, she turns to science.
Gifty is often in conflict with her two chosen paths. She practised Christianity with such fervour that her beliefs are shaken when her brother dies of an overdose. She does things that aren't in line with her Christian beliefs and then she feels bad for doing it. She wallows in guilt when succumbed to her bodily pleasures. She wanted to be good. Anything that isn't good or blazing brilliance is not the standard of Gifty. She spent her whole life under the shadow of her brother. Gifty is a person without a context in her home. She observes that her brother has always been the context and without him, every matter-of-fact thing became cruel.
Her brother has been an important person in their tiny family. He was the axis that made their world revolves. But when he dies, the anguish felt by both Gifty and her mother was unbearable to read. They mourned and grieved in their way. Gifty's mother fell into a bout of depression and self-harm which made her confused and callous in some way. Her mother first losing her husband to shame and racism, then her son to the drugs slept her days away while Gifty took care of things at home. Later when there were only two of them, her mother would be cruel to Gifty which she accepted because to a child, not having a mother is worse than having a cruel mother.
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Both science and religion provides solace in different ways. Gifty writes these little 'Dear God' letters in her journal. When she feels that God is not listening to her, she turns towards science. Her experiments with eggshells open her way into science and with the mice, she tries to understand the answers to which she didn't know the question. She feels as if both science and God has failed to make things clear, to make meaning.
.
.
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply melancholic work. Gifty with her blazing brilliance and her sharp observations makes a long-lasting impression. Gifty with her guilt, anguish, shame and intelligence takes us to the Transcendent Kingdom.
Gifty is the daughter of Ghanian immigrants who grew up in Alabama. She is brought up to be religious and has followed the Bible as far as she knew. But when she finds her congregation is stereotyping her family because of her brother's drug addiction, she starts questioning everything she knows. She questions if there is a God and if he's real, why didn't he save her brother. She wonders why God didn't save her mother from depression which flares from time to time. When she couldn't find the answers through religion, she turns to science.
Gifty is often in conflict with her two chosen paths. She practised Christianity with such fervour that her beliefs are shaken when her brother dies of an overdose. She does things that aren't in line with her Christian beliefs and then she feels bad for doing it. She wallows in guilt when succumbed to her bodily pleasures. She wanted to be good. Anything that isn't good or blazing brilliance is not the standard of Gifty. She spent her whole life under the shadow of her brother. Gifty is a person without a context in her home. She observes that her brother has always been the context and without him, every matter-of-fact thing became cruel.
Her brother has been an important person in their tiny family. He was the axis that made their world revolves. But when he dies, the anguish felt by both Gifty and her mother was unbearable to read. They mourned and grieved in their way. Gifty's mother fell into a bout of depression and self-harm which made her confused and callous in some way. Her mother first losing her husband to shame and racism, then her son to the drugs slept her days away while Gifty took care of things at home. Later when there were only two of them, her mother would be cruel to Gifty which she accepted because to a child, not having a mother is worse than having a cruel mother.
.
.
Both science and religion provides solace in different ways. Gifty writes these little 'Dear God' letters in her journal. When she feels that God is not listening to her, she turns towards science. Her experiments with eggshells open her way into science and with the mice, she tries to understand the answers to which she didn't know the question. She feels as if both science and God has failed to make things clear, to make meaning.
.
.
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply melancholic work. Gifty with her blazing brilliance and her sharp observations makes a long-lasting impression. Gifty with her guilt, anguish, shame and intelligence takes us to the Transcendent Kingdom.