A Searing Debut

At a young age, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah showed remarkable interest in writing, a talent that he cultivated well beyond it being a device for escaping reality. Following a dark section of his young life that saw his mother lose her job as a kindergarten teacher, their house foreclosed, and the increasing absence of his father, writing became his salvation. It was during his teenage years that he took his writing talent more seriously. During his high school years, he contributed literary pieces to his school’s literary magazine. They were works of a genre he fondly referred to as “I’m sad but secretly.” He reinforced his writing talent by intently becoming a voracious reader; he spent his lunch breaks and time in between shifts while working at a clothing store in the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack at the upstairs Barnes & Noble.

The son of Ghanaian immigrants, Adjei-Brenyah next took his talents to the University of Albany, SUNY. Through the university’s mentorship program, he was paired with Lynne Tillman, a novelist and essayist. It was through Tillman that Adjei-Brenyah was introduced to literary heavyweights such as Edith Wharton, Henry James, James Baldwin, and Grace Paley However, it was another writer who piqued his interest, whose writing resonated with him: George Saunders. In particular, it was Saunders’ 1998 story Sea Oak, also introduced to him by Tillman, that captivated the young Adjei-Brenyah. His admiration for Saunders then took him to the postgraduate program of Syracuse University where Saunders taught. As destiny would have it, Saunders would take Adjei-Brenyah under his tutelage. The rest, they say, was history.

In 2018, Adjei-Brenyah was vaulted into the bestseller list and, consequently, global recognition with the publication of his first book, Friday Black. It was a collection of twelve satirical stories that grappled with a plethora of subjects, with an emphasis on the interplay between racism and consumerism. A book he worked on for years, Friday Black earned Adjei-Brenyah several accolades, even catching the attention of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Colson Whitehead who named Adjei-Brenyah as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees. A sensational debut, Friday Black resoundingly announced the arrival of an up-and-coming, and excitable storyteller.

“He clearly felt awe and respect for these two women but also was not bothered by the fact that they lived a razor’s edge from death. He knew it likely helped that they were Black women; market research found that the public generally cared less for their survival. In the center of the complicated nexus of adored and hated, desired but also easy to watch being destroyed, it had to be a Black woman.”

~ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

In 2023, Adjei-Branyeh made his long-awaited literary comeback. Everyone was on their feet when it was announced that Adjei-Branyeh was releasing a new work. His debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars was one of the most highly anticipated debuts in 2023, deservedly so. In his first novel, Adjei-Branyeh worked from strength to strength, taking familiar elements from his first book and concocting full-length prose. In Chain-Gang All-Stars, Adjei-Branyeh skillfully, and with keen attention to detail, crafted a dystopian world, a resonance from the stories in his first book. Interestingly, it was not a world set in the future. Rather, his uncanny ability for world-building depicted a distorted vision of the present.

Adjei-Branyeh transported the readers to an alternative United States where convicts were given an opportunity for freedom. There was a trade-off: they must sign up for gladiatorial combat. The rules were also simple. First, they have to fight to the death in jam-packed arenas. Second, they have to survive for three years in order to finally earn their freedom. These combats were televised through a program called the Chain-Gang All-Stars Battleground, the top-rated show on the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) channel. Such bloody displays are no longer underground. Rather, they are broadcasted and categorized as hard action sports, an ostensible euphemism. The combatants were referred to as Links. Collectively, the Links are grouped in what is called a chain-gang, hence, the name of the battleground.

One of the, if not the most popular and successful Links in the Chain-Gang All-Stars Battleground was the hammer-wielding Loretta Thurwar. She has earned her stripes, with several victories under her belt, some even against the most daunting opponents, both male and female. Thurwar was convicted of killing a lover. Because of her status, she was looked up to by the Chain she was part of. She and her fellow Links, they traveled all over the country to fight against other Links from other Chains. It was a cardinal rule that Links within a chain gang don’t fight each other. A second major character came in the form of Hamara Stacker, aka Hurricane Staxxx. She was an equally charismatic and successful combatant as Loretta. Staxxx was Loretta’s teammate. They were also lovers.

With every victory, the most successful combatants – the average life span of a Link was three months – are closer to their hard-earned Freedom. Ironically, Freedom comes in two forms. Low Freedom entails death while High Freedom is what everyone yearns for. Each success also gains them weapon upgrades or upgrades in lodging in food. These are just among the rewards. The most successful Links are elevated to matinee status, with some even becoming sex symbols. Because of the notoriety she earned, advertisers were competing for every inch of Loretta’s clothing and skin. She has a celebrity status that also elicited being escorted by soldier-police officers to press conferences and other engagements.

“The GameMasters watched. They were the board of directors but also, they were more; they were dealmakers and wardens and politicians and owners, and they lived in a rarefied version of the world, a space above, for them alone. They sat and drank champagne to their philanthropic hearts’ content. They watched a game they’d won already, many times over.”

~ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

But Loretta, the top audience drawer was two weeks – and a couple of combats – away from obtaining what she had long been yearning for: High Freedom. This was enshrined in the Rightful Choice Act, “clemency, commutation of sentence, or a full pardon”. But because of her high marketability, letting Loretta go is not going to be as easy as it seemed. Letting her go, with no heir apparent, would entail substantial losses for CAPE. After all, the “sport” earns from the charisma of its combatants. It was a no-brainer that her last two weeks would not be a walk in the park. It was bound to be tumultuous. History was also not on Loretta’s side. In the history of the hard action sport, only one was able to make it out. Staxxx, on the other hand, was dreading the day that Loretta would finally earn her freedom.

By transporting the readers to an alternative world, Chain-Gang All-Stars provided an ostensible and scathing commentary on the current American penal system. It is a man-eats-man world where only the toughest survive. Despite the low probability of survival, many convicts in Adjei-Brenyah’s imagined world signed up for the CAPE program as the program allowed them an escape from the unlivable conditions of private prisons where solitary confinement was prevalent. By signing up for the CAPE program, the implants that jolt the convicts with excruciatingly painful electric shocks whenever they step out of line are removed. These are hard bargains.

Meanwhile, outside the arenas, protesters and activists gather to voice their dissent against the Rightful Choice Act. They were appealing for a repeal of the whole penal system. Adjei-Brenyah, an abolitionist himself, astutely crafted his arguments for the need for repeal of the law. However, he also balanced the story by providing the perspective of the victims of violent crimes. In one scene, a protester had a discourse with a news reporter who had a loved one killed by a convict. The discourse presented every argument of each side. The call for reform, however, went unheeded as CAPE’s management was intent on keeping the status quo. Read, the profits it earns from the pay-per-views of each combat. Beyond profit, CAPE shared the skewed view that they are deterrents to crime, the same way the death penalty is packaged.

While Adjei-Brenyah created an alternative world, the realities he underlined were close to reality. The American penal and justice systems are broken. Inequities exist within these systems. Statistics show how innocent individuals are often wrongly convicted. There was also an inordinate difference between people of color getting convicted for crimes they did not commit compared to white Americans. They are also, more often than not, meted with harsher punishments. The novel was riddled with footnotes that elucidated the laws and customs of the alternative America while, at the same time, referencing sections of the U.S. penal code or the Geneva Conventions. The footnotes also contained eulogies for real-life victims of police violence, solitary confinement, and wrongful conviction. These transcend the borders between fiction and reality.

“I’m an abolitionist, which means I’m interested in investing in communities to address problems rather than carceral answers that don’t serve communities at all. Murderers and rapists do great harm, but the carceral institutions in this country do little to mitigate that harm. In fact, they do more harm to individuals and communities. The carceral state depends on a dichotomy between innocent and guilty, or good and bad, so that they can then define harm on their terms, in the name of justice, and administer it on a massive scale to support a capitalistic, violent, and inherently inequitable system.”

~ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

Racial oppression was subtly woven into the fabric of the novel. Racism is a malady that has infiltrated every layer of modern American society. Female prisoners are also mistreated. Double standards exist. Chain-Gang All-Stars candidly underscored how the correctional system developed into an institution fraught with inhumanities. They are no longer places of rehabilitation they were originally created for. Beyond the American penal system, Chain-Gang All-Stars examined the growing and unchecked consumption of products that perpetrate violence. It has become a form of entertainment that rose from the underworld and to the surface, driven by a misplaced sense of justice.

In the dark underworld, hope still Despite the odds and the inhumane conditions that surrounded them, Loretta endeavored to achieve some level of dignity, not only for herself but her fellow Links. Regardless of race and gender, she wanted to maintain respect, even if it was just among themselves. The novel’s wonderful and dark elements were woven together by Adjei-Brenyah’s skillful storytelling and writing. He was deft in playing around with a wide range of tones and voices. He displayed an uncanny ability to manipulate the shifting time periods and points of view while, at the same time, controlling the story’s other facets. His command of language and storytelling was impressive.

Adjei-Brenyah’s abolitionist ideals were the product of the seed planted by his father’s time as a defense attorney. Over time, it developed into a mantle upon which he built his stories. This was vividly depicted in Chain-Gang All-Stars. It was a searing debut brimming with high-octane action, all the while probing into the failures of the American incarceration system through the story of Loretta Thurwar and her fellow Links. Adjei-Brenyah’s alternative America was a nod to ancient Rome where arenas were filled to the brim with spectators who wanted to witness gladiators going after each other. Adjei-Brenyah’s debut novel subtly examined the meaning of what it means to be free. Chain-Gang All-Stars, easily one of the best releases of the year, is a complex but evocative literary piece that consolidates Adjei-Brenyah’s status as one of the contemporary’s brightest literary voices.

“I’m saying that the death penalty has always been an abomination, even before the CAPE program. Prison as it exists is an abomination. Right now, the fact is, people are doing the exact kinds of harm you’re describing. Prisons haven’t deterred the harm they’re meant to deter. They’re a failed experiment.”

~ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars
Book Specs

Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Publishing Date: 2023
Number of Pages: 359
Genre: Speculative

Synopsis

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE< or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in the Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).

About the Author

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was born in 1991 in the Bronx, New York to parents who were originally from Ghana. His father was a defense attorney and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. Adjei-Brenyah grew up in Spring Valley, New York. Adjei-Brenyah’s interest in writing started at a young age. In high school, he wrote for his high school’s literature magazine.

He then attended the  University at Albany, SUNY where he completed his undergraduate degree. He learned from fellow novelist Lynne Tillman. For his postgraduate studies, he attended the graduate writing program at Syracuse University with the goal of studying under George Saunders in the creative writing program. Saunders eventually became his thesis adviser and mentor. He was the ’16-’17 Olive B. O’Connor fellow in fiction at Colgate University.

Adjei-Brenyah’s literary commenced with the publication of Friday Black in 2018. It is a collection of 12 satirical short stories. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The book was the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. In 2023, he published his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. In 2018, he was chosen by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees. He also won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

Adjei-Brenyah is currently residing in the Bronx.