In her column “Stanford TBR” (to be read), Cate Burtner recommends books that would resonate with the Stanford community — a reading list compiled for outside the classroom. Editor’s Note: This ...

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our ...

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 ...

In Yaa Gyasi’s masterful new novel, “Transcendent Kingdom,” Gifty, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience, is living the life of the mind. She has traded the pews of her childhood Pentecostal ...

When I was a child I thought I would be a dancer or a worship leader at a Pentecostal church, a preacher's wife or a glamorous actress. In high school my grades were so good that the world seemed to ...

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 ...

Making sense of the human soul is the providence of faith and art, not science. What, for that matter, even is a soul, and where does it reside? Is it in the neural pathways that transmit pleasure and ...

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The University of Wisconsin announced Yaa Gyasi’s “Transcendent Kingdom” as the 2021-22 Go Big Read novel last week. Chancellor Rebecca Blank selected the novel as part of UW’s annual common reading ...

A stoic, sanctimonious child, Gifty would pray for God to save her classmates who read books about witches and wizards. She prayed for her brother’s friends who drank at high school parties. She asked ...

Yaa Gyasi’s second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, presses hard against your chest, a literary confluence of loss and the undying miracle of human resilience. The protagonist, Gifty, is given a life ...