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Nana
Gifty’s father, the Chin Chin Man, received his nickname because he would buy achomo, or “chin chin,” from Gifty’s grandmother. He was raised Catholic but after his marriage to Gifty’s mother, he joined her Pentecostal Church. His easygoing nature and devotion to their son, Nana, led to the family’s immigration, at his wife’s request, to America. However, he isn’t happy in the states, where he is treated with racist suspicion. When Gifty is still small, the Chin Chin Man leaves his family and returns to Ghana, where he eventually remarries. The Chin Chin Man represents a frequently ignored immigrant story: the non-triumphant, unsuccessful immigrant. He comes to America and loses his dignity, his community, and his happy marriage. But he can’t simply return to his old life, either: when he returns to Ghana, he loses his connection with his beloved children, who stay in the U.S. with their mother. When Gifty visits the Chin Chin Man in Ghana, it’s clear that he doesn’t have any idea of how to connect to the life or the children he left behind in America any longer.
Father/The Chin Chin Man Quotes in Transcendent Kingdom
The Transcendent Kingdom quotes below are all either spoken by Father/The Chin Chin Man or refer to Father/The Chin Chin Man. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 10
Quotes
I’m not pretending there is an impending disaster; I truly believe that there is one. At one point, I make a low, guttural, animal sound, a sound so clearly biological in its design to elicit attention and sympathy from my fellow animals, and yet my fellow animals—my father, my brother,—do nothing but talk over me … we are all safe, in a small, rented house in Alabama, not stranded in a dark and dangerous rain forest, not on a raft in the middle of the sea. So the sound is a nonsense sound, a misplaced sound, a lion’s roar in the tundra. When I listen to the tape now, it seems to me that this itself was the disaster I foresaw, a common enough disaster for most infants these days: that I was a baby, born cute, loud, needy, but wild, but the conditions of the wilderness had changed.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14
Quotes
If I’ve thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remind myself what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound. And what a wound my father leaving was. On those phone calls with the Chin Chin Man, my mother was always so tender, drawing from a wellspring of patience that I never would have had if I were in her shoes. To think of the situation now still makes me furious. That this man, my father, went back to Ghana in such a cowardly way, leaving his two children and wife alone to navigate a difficult country, a punishing state. That he let us, let her, believe that he might return.
Chapter 15
Quotes
We walked to the Greyhound station, our mother holding our hands the entire time. We took that bus home, and I don’t think Nana made a single noise. I don’t think I did either. I could feel that something had changed among the three of us and I was trying to learn what my role in this new configuration of my family might be. That day was the end of my naughtiness, the beginning of my good years. If our mother was angry or upset at us, me for being a terror, Nana for changing his mind, she didn’t let on. She wrapped us in her arms during that long ride home, her face inscrutable. When we got home, she put all of Nana’s soccer gear into a box, sealed the box, and dumped it into the nether regions of our garage, never to be seen again.
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Father/The Chin Chin Man Quotes in Transcendent Kingdom
The Transcendent Kingdom quotes below are all either spoken by Father/The Chin Chin Man or refer to Father/The Chin Chin Man. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 10
Quotes
I’m not pretending there is an impending disaster; I truly believe that there is one. At one point, I make a low, guttural, animal sound, a sound so clearly biological in its design to elicit attention and sympathy from my fellow animals, and yet my fellow animals—my father, my brother,—do nothing but talk over me … we are all safe, in a small, rented house in Alabama, not stranded in a dark and dangerous rain forest, not on a raft in the middle of the sea. So the sound is a nonsense sound, a misplaced sound, a lion’s roar in the tundra. When I listen to the tape now, it seems to me that this itself was the disaster I foresaw, a common enough disaster for most infants these days: that I was a baby, born cute, loud, needy, but wild, but the conditions of the wilderness had changed.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14
Quotes
If I’ve thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remind myself what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound. And what a wound my father leaving was. On those phone calls with the Chin Chin Man, my mother was always so tender, drawing from a wellspring of patience that I never would have had if I were in her shoes. To think of the situation now still makes me furious. That this man, my father, went back to Ghana in such a cowardly way, leaving his two children and wife alone to navigate a difficult country, a punishing state. That he let us, let her, believe that he might return.
Chapter 15
Quotes
We walked to the Greyhound station, our mother holding our hands the entire time. We took that bus home, and I don’t think Nana made a single noise. I don’t think I did either. I could feel that something had changed among the three of us and I was trying to learn what my role in this new configuration of my family might be. That day was the end of my naughtiness, the beginning of my good years. If our mother was angry or upset at us, me for being a terror, Nana for changing his mind, she didn’t let on. She wrapped us in her arms during that long ride home, her face inscrutable. When we got home, she put all of Nana’s soccer gear into a box, sealed the box, and dumped it into the nether regions of our garage, never to be seen again.
