Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

I just finished reading this book and I feel completely raw. What honest writing! Transcendent Kingdom is a wonderfully crafted book about an immigrant family from Ghana to the United States. The story is about the immigrant experience (being connected and disconnected to the place you are from), addiction, depression, religion and science. 

Yaa Gyasi's is a poignant novel that will carry you through a seesaw of emotions. There were so many moments when I was reading where I would read sections again. The prose is beautiful and the story intimate.  Here are just some of the quotes that really spoke to me.  

“Nana’s addiction had become the sun around which all our lives revolved. I didn’t want to stare directly at it."

"She thought the problem would just go away, because what did we know about addiction? What, other than the ‘just say no campaigns,’ was there to guide any of us through the jungle of this?” 

“That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

“I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.”

I already want to read it again. Absolutely transcendent!

Listen to a couple of pages of the audiobook.