9 Luscious Literary Books Like Transcendent Kingdom

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Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Real Life matches Transcendent Kingdom for its intensity, its protagonist successful academia, its exploration of science, and its beautiful, analyzable portrayal of grief. Wallace is simply a Black PhD pupil astatine a tiny Midwestern university. Over the people of a summertime weekend, and aft precocious learning of his father’s death, helium gets into a assortment of romanticist and non-romantic entanglements that alteration his outlook connected life, academia, and himself. Taylor’s prose is perfectly stunning.

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson

Okay, I’ll admit it: there’s not 1 theme, exactly, that ties this publication to Transcendent Kingdom, though they some grapple with ambition, race, being Black successful America, and immigration. But they’re decidedly emotionally and intellectually similar. They’re some astir protagonists who privation thing precise severely (in the lawsuit of Greenland‘s protagonist, Kip, it’s to people a novel). They some consciousness they person thing to prove. And they some enactment done a batch of trauma portion pursuing their respective dreams.

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon

Gifty struggles with questions of religion successful Transcendent Kingdom, and truthful bash the characters successful this novel. Will has near his evangelical Christian religion behind, having conscionable transferred from a spiritual assemblage to a wide arts university. He soon falls successful emotion with the charismatic Phoebe, but becomes much and much acrophobic arsenic she dilatory gets entangled with a fundamentalist cult. Through Will and Phoebe, Kwon explores the truths that signifier our lives, and the catastrophic consequences of holding excessively tightly to what we deliberation we know.

Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

On the aboveground this caller doesn’t person overmuch successful communal with Transcendent Kingdom — it’s a coming-of-age caller astir a abdominous Black miss successful 1980s and 1990s Harlem. But if you’re hankering for different publication that immerses you profoundly successful 1 POV, this is your book. Malaya’s dependable is singular, and Sullivan ne'er strays from her interior (and external) struggles. It makes for an intense, astir breathless work that, portion heartbreaking astatine times, is yet afloat of joy.

Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel

If you’re looking for much books that halfway fraught mother-child relationships, arsenic good arsenic books that research archetypal and 2nd procreation migration experiences, whitethorn I urge this cleanable novel? Akash is simply a cheery Indian American antheral whose beingness is not going the mode helium wants it to. When helium returns to his puerility home, a twelvemonth aft his dad’s death, to assistance his ma battalion up the house, they’re some forced to face the messes, heartbreaks, and truths of their past for the archetypal clip successful a agelong time.

In the Field by Rachel Pastan

Check this retired if you’re looking for much books astir women successful science, and particularly highly smart, driven, and competent women determined to beryllium themselves successful fields riddled with sexism, racism, and homophobia. This humanities caller is loosely based connected the beingness of Nobel prize-winning idiosyncratic Barbara McClintock. Kate Croft arrives astatine Cornell successful 1920 acceptable to dive into a technological career, but she’s thwarted astatine each crook by men who are intimidated by however overmuch smarter she is than them. It’s infuriating — which makes it precise hard to halt reading!

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

I don’t cognize wherefore determination aren’t much books astir work. So galore of america walk truthful overmuch of our lives working, and yet it’s uncommon to find fabrication that truly gets into the affectional realties of it. Transcendent Kingdom does, and truthful does this breathtaking caller astir Sneha, a queer Indian American pistillate struggling to live, love, marque money, and marque meaning successful the mediate of a recession. It’s crisp and bighearted, comic and scathing, heartbreaking and true. I’ve ne'er work a publication that truthful beautifully and honestly captures what it feels similar to unrecorded connected this planet, successful the U.S., successful capitalism, close now.

Chemistry by Weike Wang

This is different fantastic caller astir women successful science. The narrator is simply a Chinese American pistillate getting her PhD successful chemistry. Her fellow has conscionable proposed, and her parents are thrilled that she’s astir to graduate. Her life, from the outside, looks picture-perfect. But she’s not truly definite what she wants, and having to reply her boyfriend’s connection is the past straw. On the surface, it’s quirky and adjacent comic astatine times, but underneath, this is simply a caller with teeth.

Blue-Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu

One of the cardinal themes successful Transcendent Kingdom is Gifty’s religion and however the nonaccomplishment of religion affects her life. This publication is each astir what happens erstwhile the satellite you thought you belonged to, the satellite you believed in, collapses earlier your eyes, and however hard it is to physique a caller satellite from the rubble. Kalki grows up connected an ashram successful agrarian India, believed by his parents and assemblage to beryllium an incarnation of Vishnu. As helium gets older, helium dilatory begins to spot himself differently, and the consequences of that displacement alteration his beingness forever.