This is such a sad novel. I cried at so many parts.
Perhaps what was the most heart wrenching was the story of Chin Chin Man - the father of our protagonist, Gifty - a towering, dignified man from Ghana, who upon going to America, faces an implied racism which causes his gait to shrink. Rejected and dejected, the Chin Chin man had to settle for jobs such as a janitor. In Gifty’s memories, the Chin Chin man is still a friendly giant amongst the kids, never losing much of his cheer, until one day, amidst periods of intense conflict, he just disappeared.
The haziness of the conflicting period; of economic hardship; of tightened shoestrings.
It reminds you of the saying they had of big cities like New York, where all the taxi drivers have PHDs.
There is a silent, tragic, stillness, perhaps embodied by Gifty’s mother, that pervades the entire novel. At its core, the novel is about loss. It’s about navigating grief, about life after an event that seems like nobody can recover from. It’s about not recovering. It’s about fate, and surrender - it’s about wrestling with the idea of fate, about God, about suffering, and how to go on living in a world where your loved one is no longer around, where your life has come truly and utterly apart.
It’s also about resistance, of complexes, and the varied heart wrenching ways in which Gifty deals with the tragedies of her family. The tragedies portrayed feel so vivid that I really wonder whether the author, Yaa Gyasi, has gone through something similar.
Some of the ways in which Gifty navigates her tragedy and drives are so subtle and acute that it feels impossible for someone not having experienced it to write like that. Case in point, her meditations around the idea of addiction, desire, and restraint.
In any case, it really doesn’t matter.
A relentless doctor who wants to crack at the mysteries of addiction. Who wants to “solve” addiction - as it is. Her experiments with mice. Her reclusivity. Her obsession with the mice that are hopelessly addicted to Ensure. The parts where she highlighted, that there are simply these groups, whose love for risk is so great that it overcomes their desire for self-preservation. They are, simply put, part of the statistics.
The heartbreaking picture of addiction and the final days. The total randomness of it, in America. Oxycontin.
Oxycontin. The pernicious, silently toxic, repugnant, extremely destructive force that pervaded America in the last few decades. Reading Transcendent Kingdom, I’ve felt multiple times that it should be the accompanying literature (and I am sure there are many) best paired with Empires of Pain. Its destructive powers are so sly, so random. It could really happen to anyone. Those predisposed towards escapism - and who aren’t, at a certain period of their lives? - are really the most susceptible.
This is really such a good reminder and example of the arguments against the free market and unfettered capitalism. The markets are not neutral. There are markets and industries that can be said to be positively evil. The market for addictive drugs are one, for instance. Weapons are another. How do you judge? Perhaps like this: if the increase in overall human suffering results in incredible profits for you, then you’re an evil market.
Now what other markets display these kinds of characteristics?
Maybe crypto you know. I don’t know. I need to check.
This was the first fictional novel that I’ve read this year. I have almost forgotten how good it feels to be in the vivid perspective of another. I’ve forgotten how good it feels to hold perspective.