When I read a book, I always find myself wondering what books the author was reading while they wrote. I’ve long imagined, for instance, that Alice Walker thought fondly of Zora Neale Hurston while ...

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For September, Jenna Bush Hager picked "Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyasi as her Read WIth Jenna pick. The book, which made The New York Times Best Sellers list, tells the story of a Ghanian family ...

Yaa Gyasi is a poster child for literary kismet. The author wrote her (award-winning, best-selling) first novel, Homegoing — an epic generational tale about the systemic effects of slavery — over ...

Transcendent Kingdom is Yaa Gyasi’s sophomore effort. After her critically acclaimed and award-winning debut novel, 2016’s Homegoing, Gyasi’s second book follows the story of Gifty, a fifth-year PhD ...

The moment reads as a guide to Homegoing itself. That novel is daringly expansive, its structure eschewing the idea that the story of Black people could be contained within a single generation or ...

“I would always have something to prove,” the narrator of Yaa Gyasi’s new novel says. “Nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.” In such passages of mingled frustration and ...