A review by sunsetsam723
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

dark emotional tense medium-paced

4.5

Man, this one hurt my heart. A masterful reckoning with the American carceral system that you can’t look away from because it’s interwoven with the voraciously consumable celebrity of reality television and professional sports. Devastating at every turn, but deeply funny. So much humor in the light the characters must make of their situation in order to survive - and in the bitterly accurate satire scenes of spectators such as the driver, Jerry, who imagines the prisoners’ celebrity brushing off on him, and the stereotypical gender-dynamic-conforming spectator couple, Wil and Emily, whose relationship is shaped by their responses to the “show”. This book reveals our collective complicity in the very real abuse of today’s prison system, which disproportionately incarcerates Black Americans, dehumanizes and damns those whom it imprisons, forces labor, and breeds a cycle of perpetual violence. I found myself facing, for the first time in too long, my complicated feelings about abolition, alongside the characters themselves. This is why I love dystopia! The book acts as a meditation on prisons and abolition in novel form. It’s inclusion of real-world statistics and legislation about incarceration rates, domestic violence, police weaponry, and so on drive the point home further— “you are here.” Paired with the thinly-veiled brand names that plaster everything, sponsoring the violence, and the “futuristic” technology that either exists or is frighteningly close to existing, the book condemns not just corporate greed but corporate gluttony, and the price society pays when morals cannot stop the wheels of “progress.” I cried at seeing our present reflected, at knowing what it feels like to be a part of the hopeful, outraged protest fighting in the street, and knowing what it feels like to stay home and tell myself it wouldn’t make a difference. I hope this book and its acclaim forces us to do better.