In preparation for her mother’s arrival, Gifty cleans her small apartment and buys a Ghanaian cookbook “to make up for the years I’d spent avoiding my mother’s kitchen.” Like many daughters of West African immigrants, Gifty nurtures a low-grade anxiety about what her mother will think of her lifestyle choices. Gifty tells Pastor John to fly her mother from Alabama to California to stay with her.
“I think it’s happening again.” The “it” refers to the despondent mood swings she began experiencing after Gifty’s brother, Nana, died from a heroin overdose. “She hasn’t been to church in nearly a month,” Pastor John says. Gifty receives word from her childhood pastor that her mother is having another depressive episode.
T ranscendent Kingdom begins with a phone call. Transcendent Kingdom combines Gyasi’s interest in large, complex themes with a tighter structure and even sharper character study, resulting in a sensitive and propulsive story that reveals how differently individuals, even those in the same family, seek salvation. Set in Alabama and California, the novel follows Gifty, a 28-year-old neuroscience graduate student, as she grapples with how her mother’s depression, her brother’s death, and her Pentecostal upbringing not only shaped her life’s purpose but also left her emotionally avoidant. In her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi returns more forthrightly to her original subject of mothers and daughters, using that relationship to explore the intersection of faith, culture, and science. But its epic mission comes at a cost: Characters in each chapter sometimes feel too of their decade, their individuality subsumed into their era. It is hard to overestimate the novel’s ambition, sense of history, and geographic scope. Homegoing demonstrates Gyasi’s command of language and keen eye, signaling a long and promising career.
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