Gifty

Gifty is the protagonist and first-person narrator of Transcendent Kingdom. Her parents and brother Nana are Ghanaian, but she was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. The novel tells Gifty's coming of age story, from childhood to adulthood, as she reflects on memories from her earlier life while taking care of her mother. In the main timeline, Gifty is 28 years old and trying to help her mother through a mental health collapse while also conducting research at a Stanford University lab where she is working toward her Ph.D. Her area of study is neuroscience and she is experimenting on mice in an attempt to understand which neurons in the brain are responsible for addiction. She hopes that by manipulating these neurons, one might be able to heighten a person's restraint, causing them to resist their addictive impulses. This work is very personal to Gifty because her brother...