In the novel, “Transcendent Kingdom,” Yaa Gyasi masterfully blends the personal with the scientific through the life of Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscience Ph.D. student at Stanford. Gifty’s journey is shaped by personal tragedy: her brother Nana’s death from opioid addiction and her mother’s prolonged battle with depression. These traumatic events are the reason Gifty searches for answers not only through religion but also through scientific exploration. The book isn’t just about grief and identity but an exploration of how neuroscience mixes with human suffering, spiritual longing, and the need for meaning. By incorporating complex scientific concepts such as addiction, depression, and reward behavior into the narrative, Gyasi develops her characters…

Yaa Gyasi’s novel “Transcendent Kingdom” centers on Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscience PhD student investigating addiction and depression through animal models while grappling with her religious upbringing. The novel examines the relationship between science and religion as Gifty searches for answers to her brother, Nana’s opioid addiction, and her mother’s severe depression. While her neuroscience research provides some biological insight, her faith background highlights the spiritual and emotional aspects of suffering. This essay compares the novel’s exploration of addiction with a contemporary scientific case study that examines how circuit-based neuroscience, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), sheds light on substance use disorders. The study, using nicotine addiction as an exemplar, demonstrates…

In “Transcendent Kingdom,” Yaa Gyasi masterfully blends scientific inquiry with emotional depth through the perspective of Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscience Ph.D. student at Stanford. Gifty studies addiction and depression using mouse models, attempting to understand the neurological roots of suffering that have shaped her family’s life. Her research isn’t just academic; it’s an emotional lifeline. Biology becomes a tool to make sense of pain, grief, and the limits of faith. Understanding the science behind Gifty’s work reveals how the novel bridges the gap between the brain and the heart. Reward-seeking behavior is driven by the brain’s desire for pleasurable stimuli. At the center of this system is the mesolimbic dopamine…

In the last “Sonny Blues” scene, the jazz club becomes important for healing, understanding, and sharing emotions. Sonny’s performance is more than just about music; it is also a moment of release and connection. The performance helps the narrator finally understand his brother’s pain and how art has such a healing power. The narrator tries to understand Sonny’s life through the story, as well as his addiction, love for music, and emotional nature. Their relationship is strained by silence and misunderstandings, as the narrator attempts to force Sonny to follow traditional expectations. However, as the narrator sees Sonny perform in the jazz club, he learns to listen deeply. Baldwin explains…

The argument that Recitatif reveals cruelty and dehumanization as the roots of racial division is compelling and fits Morrison’s goal of stripping away racial markers to expose deeper prejudices. By hiding Twyla and Roberta’s racial identities, Morrison forces readers to confront their own biases and shows how the urge to label others often stems from a deeper instinct to dehumanize. This shifts the focus from race as a category to the mechanisms that produce racism: judgment, exclusion, and power. The scene where Twyla and Roberta argue over their memories of Maggie, the mute kitchen worker who may have been pushed and beaten, is a touching example. The girls’ shifting recollections…

The role that social justice plays in “The Book of the Dead” is essential, especially when it comes down to the tragedy in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, where hundreds of workers died due to unsafe working conditions, leading to them having a medical condition called silicosis. She blends poetry and activism using real court testimonies, medical reports, and personal stories to advocate for justice for the victims through her art, ensuring their suffering isn’t forgotten. Her strong image and clear contrasts between the promise of industrial growth and the harsh treatment of workers highlight the human cost of unchecked capitalism. Rukeyser uses free verse and a broken structure to reflect…

Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead combines various forms of writing to be able to create a powerful and immersive narrative. She combines testimony, history, travel writing, ethnography, and scientific language in the first group of poems, and this shows how poetry can go beyond traditional boundaries. Jonathan Culler’s ideas about literature show that poetry isn’t just about beauty or style but also about a way to explore and record experiences. Culler explains that literature changes how we see language, helping readers think about topics in new and intricate ways. Rukeyser uses scientific and legal ideas in her poetry to achieve this. With this, she makes us face the Hawk’s…

According to Culler, one of the different ways people define literature is as a form of imaginative or fictional writing. This view highlights literature’s creative and artistic parts, which makes it different from factual texts. You can see literature as a way to express art, using language in unique and sometimes surprising ways. Literature also plays a distinct role in everyday communication—it encourages interpretation, stirs emotions, and engages readers in a way that factual writing does not. Culler argues that literature is a convention because social and cultural practices shape it, some ways literature functions as a convention include the use of established genres, such as poetry, drama, and novels,…

Hello, my name is Stephania. I was born and raised in New Jersey and moved to Queens, New York, a few years back. I am majoring in Health Science and hope to be accepted into LaGuardia’s Rad Tech Program. I became interested in the Rad Tech Program because I have always been fascinated by the human body and wondered how our bodies function. Ever since I was young, I have been curious about how medical imaging works and how it helps diagnose and treat patients. The idea of being able to assist in the medical field by using technology to help people has always intrigued me. I am determined to…