When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. It is still being tested, so it may not be perfect, but perhaps it will make it easier to join the discussions when they go up.**From the bestselling author of Homegoing comes a searing novel of love and loss, addiction and redemption, straight from the heart of contemporary America**Īs a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance.

If you 'follow' the book club post you will receive a notification when a new post, a discussion thread for book club, is added to the collection. If you would like to view any past book club selection or want to see how things work, you may find the complete archive here.įor those of you that are viewing reddit on the redesigned desktop version you will see an option on this post to 'follow'. Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns if you have apprehensions about the subject matter. If you would like to view potential content warnings, an audience-created list may be found here (may contain potential spoilers). Usually it is pretty easy to catch up and you are always welcome to join the discussions a little later. Don't worry about joining later on in the month. You are welcome to read at your own pace. You may find the dates of, and links to, the discussion threads below in the sticky comment on this post. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief-a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.īut even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on Ox圜ontin. Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction.

Each week there will be a discussion thread and when we are done, Yaa herself will be joining us for an AMA.įrom Goodreads (feel free to skip if you prefer to know nothing going into the book): ĭuring the month of August, we will be reading Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. If you are looking for the announcement thread for the previous month, it may be found here.

Transcendent kingdom goodreads