Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. Boots! Where would we be without books? Where would we be without good? No, Tenderberg. It's a rhetorical question, sir. but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm talking for the second time to Yajasi, whose name I would like to spell for you,

because I think you'll want to get her books and the name is not immediately obvious.

The name is spelled G-Y-A-S-I-Jesse.

Y-Jessie Y-A-A-A-I-Y-A-A-A-Y-Jessi Y-A.

And I found her two books, The Newer Transcendant Kingdom and Homegoing,

to be extraordinary penetrations into areas that are very difficult to address, perhaps especially difficult to address in novels.

In the more recent book, Transcendent Kingdom, we're exploring the difference between religion and science in their ability to provide solutions to the problems

of depression and addiction. Do you feel in your own life that these two arenas are equally valid?

I do feel in my own life that these two arenas are equally valid? I do feel in my own life that these two arenas are equally valid.

I, like Gifty, I grew up in the church, as they say.

I grew up Pentecostal.

And though I also, like Gifty, ended up leaving the church, I think that that kind of initial framework, that way of leaving space in your life for things that are mysterious, things that fill you with awe, the concept of faith.

Like I've always found those ideas to be quite beautiful, even as I have struggled with other aspects of my religion.

And so, you know, I think I've kind of kept in touch with that, even as I myself have kind of started to be more interested in things like science.

Well, it's fascinating.

In Transcendent Kingdom, the great quality of the novel is not to set religion and science

at each other's throats, but rather to explore where the two can combine,

to provide a way of looking at life that is not easy for a scientist, that is to say,

religion, and a way of looking at life that is not easy for a person of the church,

that is to say science. Now, in this book, you mention that people, you know, that you've been

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