Transcendent Kingdom

 Two years ago I read a book called Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Her book was about people living in Ghana who were captured and taken as slaves to the United States of America. I forgot all about that story when I started reading Transcendent Kingdom until I heard the name of the main character which is Gifty. Gifty is an unusual name. This story is the follow up to the first one. In this story Gifty is dealing with her life as a girl of Ghanaian descent living in poverty in rural Alabama. Gifty's father abandoned the family when she was three years old. He moved back to Ghana and started another family there. Her mother did not handle this well and neither did her older brother. Beginning at the age of 3, Gifty has been taking care of her mother and brother day and night. She grows up to be a rigid, controlling person. Her one goal in life is to determine how to cure addiction or, honestly, how to cure her mother and brother. She is a Harvard trained neurosurgeon who is more comfortable taking care of mice than taking care of people. Her mice in her lab are addicted to Ensure, the protein drink which is much like fortified chocolate milk. In the book the author writes that her mother was callous. Then she adds that a callous is the body's reaction to a pain. A callous is the thickening of skin in response to pain. Without saying so, she implies her mother was callous because of all the trauma and racism and sexism she has endured. I thought the way she wrote was simply beautiful. This book is sad but not overwhelmingly sad. Just the right amount of joy and wonder are mixed in to make the story palatable. I read the book via audio book which was nice because when Gifty's mother scolds her, she does it in a thick accent and I think her mom sounded more callous than if I had just read the words on a page.