41 pages • 1 hour read
Yaa GyasiTranscendent Kingdom
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
When Gifty picks up her mother at the start of the novel, she notices how much weight she has lost, noting, “I hardly recognized her, this woman who had always found skinny people offensive, as though a kind of laziness or failure of character kept them from appreciating the pure joy that is a good meal” (10). In this way, Transcendent Kingdom sets up the ability to enjoy food as a barometer of mental health and emotional progress. Later on, when Gifty’s mother cooks for her, Gifty says, “that food was better than anything I had eaten in months […] better still for having been the one sign of life from a woman who had done nothing but sleep since her arrival” (155).
The desire to cook and eat properly is a fundamental symptom of recovery and well-being here. It can also help promote both of these things. More than that, it is a means of bonding and communication. Gifty recalls how much joy she got from watching her ex-boyfriend Raymond cook, and she establishes a friendship with a colleague, Katherine, through the baked goods the latter brings to her office. Likewise, she brings Han a cupcake to celebrate the acceptance of one of his papers for publication. Food in the novel represents the simple human pleasure of being with others. It is the humble pleasure of participating in the survival of a community or family, a pleasure free from the dramatic demands of transcendent kingdoms or intoxicating highs.
Experiments and Experimentation
The motif of experimentation recurs throughout Transcendent Kingdom. It is present in the “Naked Egg experiment” Gifty recalls as having been the first experiment she ever undertook (45), and it is present in the studies she references, like the 1985 one “on the effects of cognitive behavioral training on […] free-throw performance” (165), or the 2015 study comparing schizophrenics in India and Ghana with those in America (177). Then, there are her own experiments on the mice in her lab. Experimentation in these cases aim at establishing objectivity and certainty; by repeating conditions, and changing certain variables, it strives to discover definite truths about the world. Such truths, say in connection to athletic performance or addiction, can then be used to help resolve or assuage human problems.
However, there is also a broader sense of experimentation in the text. Gifty experiments both with alcohol and with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and she explores the effects that they have on her. Such experiments are, by contrast with the first type, personal and subjective. So, too, are the lives of Gifty and her mother overall. As Gifty says, “we were ourselves an experiment” (46). Taken in this way, Gifty’s mother’s movement to the United States, as well as the hardship they faced when there, was an experiment in living. It involved attempting something that had never been tried before. and in contrast to established and safe ways of life, the results or outcomes would be uncertain.
Shame and Social Censure
Shame and embarrassment play defining roles in the lives of Gifty and her mother. As Gifty says, when deliberately not mentioning the cause of her brother’s death to Han, “It embarrassed me to know that I would have been embarrassed to talk about Nana’s addiction with Han” (158). Not only is she embarrassed about what happened to him, but she is embarrassed by the fact that she is embarrassed. Shame is also associated with sexual activity. Gifty observes, when a rash of pregnancies affects her church, that “for these girls to be young, unmarried, pregnant, meant that a particular kind of shame had descended on my congregation” (192).
Shame, then, is not merely about misdemeanours committed by the individual: Shame is social. This is not just in the sense that it stems from the judgment, or imagined judgment, of other people. It is also in the sense that we can feel ashamed for what others associated with us have done. This is most felt in connection with family members, with parents or siblings, but it can as well be linked to the actions of those in a broader community or group, such as a church. For that very reason, shame is also irrational. To feel judged over something we had no control over, like our parents’ actions, is merely submission to a form of social indoctrination that neither helps nor protects us. This is why Gifty must cast off the shame she feels around her brother and recognize it as irrational so that she can come to terms with her past.
