Discussion led by Tomas Matza, PhD
Professor of Anthropology
University of Pittsburgh
Learn more about Transcendent Kingdom:
Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national bestseller Homegoing is “a book of blazing brilliance” (The Washington Post) — a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Transcendent Kingdom introduces us to Gifty, a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford, studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Turning to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, Gifty finds herself hungering for her evangelical childhood faith, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
