Transcendent Kingdom
Transcendent KingdomYaa Gyasi
Characters in Transcendent Kingdom
8 characters, main characters first.Main characters
Gifty
A Ghanaian-American neuroscience PhD student studying addiction, torn between faith and science.
Supporting characters
Nana
Gifty's gifted older brother, whose death from opioid addiction haunts the family.
Gifty's mother
A devout, hardworking immigrant felled by profound depression after Nana's death.
Raymond (Transcendent Kingdom)
A preacher's son studying Modern Thought and Literature whom Gifty dates early in graduate school.
Han (Transcendent Kingdom)
Gifty's lab partner at Stanford, whose research images neural circuits tied to reward expectation.
Pastor John (Transcendent Kingdom)
Head pastor of the Pentecostal church in Huntsville, Alabama, where Gifty's family worships.
Aunt Joyce (Transcendent Kingdom)
Gifty's mother's sister, who lives in Ghana.
Katherine (Transcendent Kingdom)
A neuroscience colleague of Gifty's who previously worked as a psychiatric practitioner.