She had her come-to-Jesus moment there in middle school.Īfter their father left, Nana became Gifty’s primary caretaker. Gifty was raised in this church as a child she accepted its teachings without question. Soon after coming to Alabama, Gifty's mother joined the Pentecostal First Assemblies of God Church, a primarily white church, since she didn’t yet know enough about America to realize that churches there have either Black or white congregations. But when Gifty was still a preschooler, the Chin Chin Man went back to Ghana for a visit and never returned. By the time Gifty was born, her father was working as a school janitor and was the primary parent for the children while their mother worked the night shift. In America, Gifty’s mother worked as a home health aide. Gifty herself was a surprise baby, born when her mother was 40. Soon after, Gifty’s father, the Chin Chin Man, followed them. Gifty’s mother wanted to give her first-born son, Nana, a better life, so she immigrated to America from Ghana when he was a baby. As Gifty splits her time between taking care of her mother and working on her experiments, she reminisces about her childhood and considers the way religion and science have shaped her life. Gifty asks Pastor John to put her mother on a plane to California so she can take care of her mother. As Gifty plugs away at the experiments necessary for her doctoral thesis about the neurological pathways of addiction and depression, she receives word from Pastor John that her mother is experiencing another major depressive episode.
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