May's Re-Read: Transcendent Kingdom

While writing Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa’s best friend from high school’s life and work inspired the character of her protagonist, Gifty (The Paris Review, NPR).

Gifty, 28, guides us through her experiences, reflections, and observations during the course of her 6th year PhD candidacy at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her perspective and stories stem from her lived experience as a first generation Ghanaian American born in the American south, second daughter, Harvard and Stanford educated woman of faith and science among other aspects and intersections of her identity.

Through her research on the neural circuits of reward-seeking behavior, she asks:

Could optogenetics be used to identify the neural mechanism involved in psychiatric illnesses where there are issues with reward seeking, like in depression, where there is too much restraint in seeking pleasure, or drug addiction, where there is not enough? 

Blending academic and humanistic inquiry, she continues by asking: 

In other words…could this science work on the people who need it the most? 

Then her question becomes personal:

Could it get a brother to set down a needle? Could it get a mother out of bed? (44)

Gifty’s narrative traverses the past and present. She cares for her mother while in school, moves through grief over the loss of her brother, Nana, and shares the mental and emotional challenges of being close to others, romantic, platonic, and familial. Through Gifty’s writings from lab discoveries, memory, and behavioral psychology, we witness her revelations, lamentations, and hesitations. Friendship is one of many lenses to view Gifty’s experience and Yaa’s craft, but we also see that friendship provides the mirror, care, and answers left unfulfilled by faith and science.

My mentor mailed me Transcendent Kingdom in December 2020 just before I started graduate school. Aged 30, I related to Gifty’s intellectual and academic ambitions and avoidant inhibitions when it came to authenticity, especially in my romantic partnerships.

Re-reading this novel five years later, I feel the weight of grief that Gifty experiences and center her reflections and questions even while recognizing where I’ve felt similarly. Even if our losses, grief journeys, and experiences of moving through the world, and life, differ, I see Gifty and see myself from childhood to now. I appreciate how my friendships are and have been my anchors as faith and reasoning steer my actions and decisions.

While revisiting Yaa’s novel and relearning some of the research behind reward seeking behavior through Gifty’s story, I noticed my own tendencies to act in pursuit of rewards: an addictive habit where I’d read part of a chapter in this book then check my email, covet LinkedIn posts reactions, want a project or job opportunity to release me from this uncomfortable but exciting period of charting my next career path. I was letting other people determine whether my skills were wanted, hired, valued until, thanks to Gifty, I remembered that the brain and mind are infinite, unknowable, soulful, and magical (20-21). We are wondrous, capable, and surrounded by support, opportunity, and possibility.

Of course! This book remains a keepsake because of the beloved person who gave it to me, a return to my 28 and 30 year-old self, familiar feelings in grad school, and a meditation on faith, family, and hope.

Do you keep books inscribed to you? Or do you have a book that someone else inscribed, addressed to another person, but remains in your personal library?

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. I had the pleasure of seeing Aminatou and Ann live at the State Theater in Austin for their Call Your Girlfriend podcast tour in the before times (2019).

When uncertainty persists (hiiii 2020s), the answer to our questions may be right in front of us. Bibliomancy is a form of divination that may offer an answer to a dilemma by flipping to a random page in a book and interpreting the passage (Smithsonian Magazine).

Here’s a passage from Transcendent Kingdom after asking:

What do faith and hope teach us about reward and restraint? What do we need to remember? 

Opened to chapter 38, passage on page 181

I ran into Katherine at the sandwich shop about a week after I’d bumbled through our lunch. I saw her bent over before a wire rack of chips, trying to pick out which ones she wanted, and I turned on my heels to escape. 

“Gifty!” she shouted. I’d almost made it to the door. She jogged over toward me, a bag of sour cream and onion in hand. “How are you doing?” she asked. 
“Oh hi, Katherine. I’m doing great, thanks,” I said. 
“Why don’t you join me for lunch?”
“I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“It’ll still be there after you eat,” she said, reaching for my hand. “I insist.” 

She paid for the chips and my sandwich as well, and we headed over to the high-tops at the far end of the shop. It was almost empty save a few undergrads who had made their way over to this graduate student part of campus, probably for the quiet, the decreased chance of recognition. I’d once been like that, so lonely that I craved further loneliness. Even after I’d made a few friends in college, I would still go out of my way to create whatever conditions I needed that might allow me to be alone. If I’d done it right that day, I wouldn’t be stuck eating with Katherine.” 

For whatever reason, we sometimes run into that friend who we don’t have the headspace nor the capacity to connect with at that time.

“If I’d done it right.” Interesting, no? Gifty is saying that restraining from connecting with Katherine will get her to her reward: being alone. I think remembering what the role of friendship is in faith and hope and what the role of friendship is in loneliness and connection. Sometimes restraining from connection will reward us with being by ourselves (and I’m well aware of solitude’s importance for well being and how it differs from loneliness, which boundaries help to support).

But sometimes a nudge toward the reverse: restrain ourselves from loneliness, then be rewarded with connection so we’ll achieve our hopes for community, love, and belonging.  

Support loved ones - SAMHSA has resources for how to see your people and get the facts about mental health

Reunite with a book to re-read - While walking my dog in my neighborhood, I picked up John Green’s Paper Towns in one of the little free libraries. Coincidentally, friendship is among the themes in Paper Towns, specifically how friendship shapes our identities.  Shout-out to Fantastic Voyage and their newsletter! Subscribe for laughs