Reflection on Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

This book was a good foray back into fiction. It was an easy, short read that was also engrossing. I like nonfiction because I always know the ending, but I think fiction is so powerful because it is always imbued with a realness coming from the author and their experiences. I particularly enjoyed the kind of "cut" writing style with abrupt flashbacks, lacking overt transition. Something about it felt like a friend telling a story, instead of contrived or forced writing.

 
The book was short, so I will keep the review short, but here are a few quotes to chew on:

On drive, "if there was a hunger, it was a different kind, the simple hunger of those who had been fed one thing but wanted another." (p.23)

On racism and insecurity, "The lesson I have never quite been able to shake: that I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it." (p.52-53) This quote brought me back to a book I read last year that I never got around to blogging, called Whistling Vivaldi. It was about the gap between demographics once they get to college and feel this same need to prove themselves on behalf of their race or gender and how, sometimes, the isolation from that actually hurts performance.

 
On judgment and family dynamics, "It's those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged." (p.41)

On personality and family, "The thing I feared, becoming my mother, was happening, physically, in spite of myself." (p.45) This resonated with me because I think, at some point, everyone feels like they don't want to take certain traits from their parents, but there are some genetically you just can't avoid. I think it's humbling and a good way to look at yourself in the mirror and think fondly on strange, lovely family dynamics.

 
On people, and as a manner of compassion, "If I've thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remind myself what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound." (p.60)

On religion and Southern Baptism, "[Like they] saw God as a kind of prize that only some were good enough to win." "We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn't change, but we do" (p.107) These quotes were two sides of the same coin reflecting a religious journey I think a lot of people in this generation have embarked on.

On poverty, "I already understood the spectacle of poverty, the competing impulses to help and to look away," (p.83)

On addiction, "I watched him (her brother) repeat his doomed actions with that beautifully pure, deluded hope of an addict, the hope that says, This time will be different. this time I'll make it out okay." (p.100) "God, I wish it was cancer, not for his sake but for mine. Not because the nature of his suffering would change significantly but because the nature of my suffering would. I would have a better story than the one I had." (p.132) "[When I saw him and thought What a waste], But the waste was my own, the waste was what I missed out on whenever I looked at him and saw just his addiction." (p.177)

On living, "[Humans want] to run right up to the edge of our lives, which is, in some ways to live fully." (p.188)

Overall, this book was excellent. I was looking for something short that I could get through quickly, and the book exceeded expectations. I may even start rotating fiction back into my reads (after I finish all the planning books, of course). Thankful for Goodreads and a good title for picking this one!