“Nana is the reason I began this work, but not in a wholesome, made-for-TED Talk kind of way. Instead, this science was a way for me to challenge myself, to do something truly hard, and in so doing to work through all of my misunderstandings about his addiction and all of my shame. Because I still have so much shame.” (Gyasi, 160)

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        This quote taken from Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, is only a glimpse of the shame, guilt, science, all wrapped up in beauty, love, and religion that one will see when entering this novel. It reads beautifully, as if written to be an autobiography. This quote represents the struggles Gifty faces, her guilt, shame, and feeling of unfinishedness in life. She lost a part of herself when she lost her big brother, and this novel takes us on a journey of Gifty finding herself again. Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscientist at Stanford, narrates the novel. She maintains little to no social life, and is strongly shaped by her religion and her family. The main character’s brother, Nana, a star athlete taken down by one sports injury, is the perfect example of being a victim of American health care. 

        Nana endured a mild sports injury during a basketball game, and as Gifty and her mother sat with Nana in the emergency room, his doctor was quick to prescribe Oxycontin, and then he “didn’t wait for any of us to speak… he just got up and left the room.” (Gyasi, 140) Doctors blindly prescribe opioids without warning the individual or family of the risks of addiction and other side effects that go along with taking them. Gifty “loved God, her brother, and her mother, in that order.” So, it is clear why she began her research in order to cure the addiction that killed her brother. Her work revolves around reward-seeking experiments with mice. She explains “the mice just have to decide” in the behavioral chamber she created, where mice would receive a treat if pulling a lever, but the lever would either give the treat or deliver a shock. Most mice give up in fear of being shocked, but Gifty is interested in “the final group of mice, who never stopped. Day after day, shock after shock, they pressed the lever.” Gifty is interested in the mice that would essentially die for their treat. Their treat being chocolate milk, and Nana’s being opioids. 

        Gifty is reluctant to tell people the stories of her family because of fear of judgement, and fear of letting people into her life, but she is not shy about writing in her journal to God about it.  Her journals offer readers thought-provoking insights to her relationship with her mother. The journal entries offer stories about her mother when Gifty was young, how her mother treated her. She calls her mother, “The Black Mamba” or TBM for short. The black mamba is an African snake that is one of the most deadly snakes in the world—extremely fast and highly aggressive. Gifty describes her mother as a “seven-foot snake that looked like a slender woman in a skintight leather dress,” a woman who exemplifies beauty and determinism in her younger ages but anger and depression in her later years. Her mother was not one who was warm and kind, but independent. When Nana dies, Gifty’s mother sheds the skin of the black mamba, and depression reaps havoc over her. While Gifty pushes her mother to seek treatment, her mother is shy of it from the poor treatment she experienced in a psychiatric facility. Gifty explains the “shock” treatment her mother was given in her time at the psychiatric facility. It is used “in order to treat something that is impossible to see, and often difficult to accept.” Shock therapy is a dangerous practice that has luckily improved since the 1950s. However, Gifty’s mother is an example of shock therapy that does not work, that caused her to fear medicine that could have saved her life. 

        To write about Transcendent Kingdom in one review is to write about the ocean with one word. It is impossible to understand the intricate details that Gyasi includes in her novel. She tackles love, religion, addiction, and loss all in one kingdom. Her work demonstrates the issues of western American medicine, that thinks about the here and now, and not what can happen in a week, month, or year. I applaud Gyasi, as this is her second novel and has won rewards for her two novels. She will be a force to be reckoned with in the writing community. Let the reading speak for itself, and enter the transcendent kingdom.