Throughout Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi takes us into Gifty’s research. If Christianity cannot answer her questions, can science? This is Gifty’s ongoing struggle at the start of the book, and it reappears when her mother returns. But what if the answer to this question is “I don’t know,” or worse still, “Nothing”?

When the answer to this question is “Because God deemed it so,” we might feel comforted. Our curiosity around this issue has sparked everything from science to literature to philosophy to religion.

“What’s the point of all of this?” is a question that separates humans from other animals. This becomes the final nail in the family’s coffin, causing the series of additional losses that result in Gifty turning away from faith. Its darkness seeps into the family, a familiar story in a country facing an opioid epidemic. When Nana gets hurt playing basketball and is prescribed Ox圜ontin, addiction slowly overtakes him. When her father leaves, she delves into her faith more deeply, looking for answers to why her father left and why her brother seems to be moving farther from the family as well. Gifty’s parents think she is too young to understand what’s happening, but she seems to be the one who is most affected by the family’s misfortune. He returned to Ghana, the country that has always loved and accepted him. The persistence of this prejudice turned Nana away from the church and their father away from America. Throughout the novel, Gifty remembers moments when her childhood was darkened by racism and discrimination in the community. The family cannot shake the discrimination of the South, even within the church. Her experience at the church gave her hope in America, so she convinced Nana’s father to travel from Ghana-and they had a second child, Gifty. Like many other immigrants who seek community and acceptance, she joined the local evangelical church. Thinking she would find more opportunity for her family, she found instead that America can be cold and indifferent to newcomers. Gifty’s mother had moved to Huntsville, Alabama, from her home in Ghana with a bag in one hand and an infant son in the other. Gyasi paints a textured picture of race and the American diaspora experience. However, when her mother comes back into her life, she starts to question her choice of moving away from her faith and finds herself longing for the comfort she once found in God. A neuroscience researcher, she spends most of her time with the mice in her lab, studying their behavior and trying to learn what makes them behave the way they do. So Gifty looks to science for answers to the misfortune that has befallen her.

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