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Chapter 37
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Transcendent Kingdom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Religion
Self-Discovery, Identity, and Individuality
Addiction, Depression, and Control
Trauma, Caretaking, and Intimacy
Summary
Analysis
About a week after their lunch at the Thai place, Gifty runs into Katherine in the sandwich shop. For a long time, Gifty has gone out of her way to avoid recognition and companionship like this. Katherine muses about living on the west coast and the trouble of balancing her career with her husband’s desire for kids. She asks if Gifty wants any, and Gifty says “no.”
Although she wasn’t able to open up to Katherine at their previous lunch, fate seems to hand Gifty another opportunity when she randomly encounters Katherine in the café. Katherine continues to offer intimacy and connection to Gifty, and her openness begins to break down some of Gifty’s barriers.
Active
Themes
Gifty finds herself confessing her inadvertent year-long celibacy to Katherine. She is surprised she said anything, since she’s still timid on the subject thanks to her early religious training. She remembers when she lost her virginity just after college. She was so tense that the sex barely worked. But she’d enjoyed it enough to continue her relationship with her boyfriend, at least until she left for grad school.
Despite her tendency to avoid talking about herself and especially her problems, Gifty finds herself opening up to Katherine. She doesn’t start with her real worry (her mother), though, opting for the safer ground of sex. But by confessing her involuntary celibacy, she’s also acknowledging how isolated she has become in the last year of her research.
Active
Themes
Katherine changes the topic, asking Gifty how she got into neuroscience. Thrown off guard, Gifty blurts out that her mother is staying with her and that she’s depressed and resistant to help after a bad experience in psychiatric care. Katherine expresses sympathy, but when she asks how she can help, Gifty thinks, “Only God can help me.”
Active
Themes
After Nana’s death, Gifty’s mother threw herself into planning a Ghanaian-style funeral, complete with mourning clothes for her and Gifty. She cried so much that she passed out from dehydration once, and she scratched herself until she bled. She and Gifty were completely alone. No one showed up to support them: not their church, not the Ghanaian community, not the Chin Chin Man. After three weeks, Pastor John visited. Gifty was so hungry for touch that she loved him when he laid a hand on her head to pray. And he stayed in her and her mother’s life since that day.
Active
Themes
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Gifty never told her mother that she hated her mourning clothes from Ghana. At the funeral, her mother and the other Ghanaians paced, wept, and sang, questioning God while the Americans watched on, perplexed. Pastor John’s prayers assured everyone that Nana’s death was God’s plan. Gifty was keenly aware of how much Nana would have hated his funeral, especially the way that everyone avoided considering or empathizing with the part of his life that happened after his addiction.
Active
Themes
