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Chain-Gang All-Stars
2023 novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Chain-Gang All-Stars is the debut novel of American author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, published by Pantheon Books on May 2, 2023. It was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, as well as other awards. The novel is set in an imagined America, where convicted wards of state are offered an alternative path to death row or 25-plus years sentences and participate in televised death matches. The story centers around Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker, two of CAPE's most famous combatants and partners in life and battle.
Adjei-Brenyah critiques the carceral system, capitalist society, and commodification of human suffering.
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Plot
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In a dystopian near-future United States, death-row and long-term prisoners can opt into the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) program, which forces them to fight in televised, gladiatorial death matches. Survival over three years earns them “High Freedom” and release, while death results in execution.
The novel alternates between multiple perspectives, but centers on Loretta “Grand Colossal” Thurwar and her teammate and lover Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker, members of the A‑Hamm Chain. Thurwar earns a major upset victory in her debut match and nears freedom, while Staxxx supports her as they navigate corruption, forced rules, and the death of veteran Link Sunset Harkless.
Flashbacks introduce Hendrix “Singer” Young and Simon J. Craft on the Sing‑Attica‑Sing Chain: Young’s decision to join CAPE to escape punitive prison conditions, and Craft’s mental fracture after torture with a device called the “Influencer”. Craft eventually massacres his Chain except Young, who restrains him.
In the present, protest movements gain traction outside the arenas. After a doubles match in which Thurwar and Staxxx defeat Craft and Young, they learn CAPE intends to pit them against one another. In their climactic final duel, Staxxx allows Thurwar to kill her, securing Thurwar’s High Freedom. The story ends ambiguously, implying Thurwar may join the movement to dismantle CAPE.[1]
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Development
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I didn't always know it would be a novel. Originally, I wanted it to be a short story in Friday Black. But there was just too much to say once I got started. By the time the book comes out, the idea will be eight years old, so I've had it in my head for a while now.
Adjei-Brenyah, on the novel's conception[2]
Adjei-Brenyah originally conceived Chain Gang All-Stars as a short story in his collection Friday Black.[3] He did extensive research for the novel, such as food in prisons and children affected by parents who are incarcerated.
He explained its purpose, "I've been interrogating this idea that is sort of hard-baked in so much of our media, so many of our police procedurals, that there are good people and bad people, and bad people deserve to be punished or bad things happen to them. And I think abolition in this book are really trying to get us to interrogate those ideas and see if we can move towards something a little bit more nuanced and elevated."[4]
The novel is dedicated to his father, who was a criminal defense attorney. In the epigraph, he quotes American rapper Kendrick Lamar's "The Art of Peer Pressure": "I hope the Universe love you today," from Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012). He named the rapper as a major influence on him, who "says things that matter". He intentionally used footnotes to break the narrative, calling this an "ethical decision" as readers could forget what Chain-Gang is commentating on.[2]
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Themes
Adjei-Brenyah tackles themes of systemic racism, the prison-industrial complex, exploitation, and the spectacle of violence in media. Chain-Gang All-Stars reflects on society's capacity for both dehumanization and resilience, challenging readers to examine where entertainment, profit, and justice intersect in harmful ways.
Reception
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Chain-Gang All-Stars received starred reviews from Booklist,[5] Kirkus Reviews,[6] Library Journal,[7] and Publishers Weekly.[8]
Kirkus Reviews compared the novel to "a rowdy, profane, and indignant blues shout" version of The Hunger Games.[6] In The Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks also compared the novel to The Hunger Games, as well as to Squid Game, Battle Royale, and Invisible Man, though Sacks' review was more mixed, noting that "since the novel assails the exploitation of black prisoners for entertainment, it cannot be freely entertaining itself, and a dampening sense of shame and reluctance permeates the scenes, which are often interrupted by footnotes dispensing sobering statistics about the prison system—not the one in the novel but the real one." Sacks concluded: "A straightforwardly realistic novel about prisons would be infinitely more damning—though, paradoxically, it would never be selected for book clubs."[9]
Contrary to Sacks's review, Booklist's Terry Hong said that "Adjei-Brenyah's reality-adjacent tale could ultimately, terrifyingly, prove prescient." Hong explained: "What might seem to be a dystopian nightmare is even more terrifying because Adjei-Brenyah brilliantly broadcasts such irrefutable truths as the U.S. having the world's highest rate of incarceration, with disproportionate numbers of Black and POC prisoners. His chilling footnotes shrewdly interrupt his fiction with real names and stark statistics, exposing racism, inequity, corruption, suicide, and abuse." Hong concluded: "Given the rampant, explicit brutality, all should heed a character's warning, 'I'll tell you and I can't untell you, you understand?'"[5]
Similarly, Publishers Weekly highlighted how "the author delivers insightful critiques of the prison-industrial complex, capitalism, and the ways in which Hollywood and celebrity culture exploit Black talent," while also indicating that "both the political allegory and the edge-of-your-seat action work beautifully."[8]
Library Journal's Sarah Hashimoto called Chain-Gang All-Stars "an unforgettable book reverberating with alarming truths and providing an uncomfortable look at an all-too-imaginable future".[7]
Jennifer M. Brown, writing for Shelf Awareness, called Chain-Gang All-Stars a "powerful, imaginative debut novel" that "pulls no punches in the parallels he draws between incarceration and slavery, unpaid labor and power imbalance". Brown concluded, "The story may be fiction, but Adjei-Brenyah delivers the truth."[10]
Bidisha Mamata, writing for The Observer, called the novel "crushingly painful" with "loaded and on-the-nose commentary on racism, exploitation, inequality and the legacy and loud echoes of slavery in the US." Like Sacks, Mamata felt that
the richness of the conceit makes it tiresome to read [...] Even though the ideas are big and bold, the novel is a slog. In its characters' endless cycle of violence, misery, trauma and rumination, all light and shade is lost. There is action in spades, but little real plot; dialogue, but little psychological nuance. We are told many of the condemned characters' tragic backstories, often in poignantly throwaway footnotes....we do not feel them or feel for them. The main characters glower like video game characters and talk like CGI bounty hunters.
Mamata indicated that "Adjei-Brenyah is clearly a writer of substance, with something to say" but thought readers should "skip" reading Chain-Gang All-Stars "and wait instead for pop culture to eat itself, shed all irony and churn out the inevitable Netflix adaptation".[11]
Ron Charles of The Washington Post called the novel, "a devastating indictment of our penal system and our attendant enthusiasm for violence." Charles further stated, "Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so upsetting and illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing."[12]
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Awards and honors
The New York Times named Chain-Gang All-Stars one of the top ten books of 2023.[13] Kirkus Reviews[6] and Shelf Awareness[14] also included it on their list of the year's best books. Booklist included it on their list of the top ten debut novels of the year.[15]
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References
External links
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