Yaa Gyasi talks about Transcendent Kingdom. What a Go Big Read presentation this will be!

“We are all a million things at once,” Yaa Gyasi has said about her novel, Transcendent Kingdom.

Her book uses fiction to explore the very real issues of race, immigration, science, faith and family. In it, we meet Gifty, a graduate student in neuroscience and the only member of her Ghanaian family born in the United States, as she examines her family’s experience of immigrating and her own place in the world. There is much that is familiar to a health sciences community, both in the portrayals of scientific research and in the realities of addiction and challenges to mental health.

Gyasi will discuss her novel at this year’s Go Big Read keynote event Nov. 3 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Memorial Union’s Shannon Hall. No tickets are required for this free in-person, live event, which will also be livestreamed at gobigread.wisc.edu.

UW–Madison assistant professor of English Ainehi Edoro-Glines will be the discussant for the event. Edoro-Glines teaches and researches African literature, political theory, and literature in social media and is the founder and editor of Brittle Paper, a leading online platform dedicated to African writing and literary culture.