“A home is an origin story. A home is a thing to carry. A home is a wild field of energy that floods floods floods. Call me. Call me home.” - Nana Kwame Adjel-Brenyan
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjel-Brenyan is a masterpiece that intertwines vicious tensions of a dystopian society with the harsh reality of the incarcerated world. Following the perspectives of mainly gladiator fighters Loretta Thurwar and Hamara Stacker (better known with her stage name Hurricane Staxx), and glimpses of other perspectives surrounding this inhumane sport. It was a great piece of intricate world-building that arouses entertainment but also disgust, whether it be silencing someone with magnetic shocks or an Influencer, an instrument that causes immense pain. It was a novel that truly aligned with my own interests about prison rights.
I found the book yesterday when browsing through Barnes and Nobles, and browsing among the books, I picked up on the flashy red, black, and yellow cover of the story. I didn’t expect much, only the fact that the premise of the book. But here I am.
Adjel-Brenyan truly understood the assignment. Underneath the dystopian gladiator galore, true facts and accounts of the inhumane prison conditions that have shaped the world that the author wrote. Because I had done some research of the Attica Prison Uprising, I was familiar with some of the prison “chain gang” names. Yet, I was surprised by the way that Adjel-Brenyan handled the different perspectives of the fictional world. While it mainly followed the prisoners fighters, or Links, the author also details short but important excerpts of Mari, who is the daughter of a former Link, the doctor Patricia who created the Influencer, or the most harsh torture device, the managers of the game and their disconnect to the lives lost behind it, and different viewers who watch the horrid game in entertainment. Additionally, I loved the way Adjel-Brenyan respected the lives of each Link who died with their true name, humanizing in a small font on the bottom of the page in such a dehumanizing world. Possibly, the author was fighting against such a world, although fictional, with a glimmer of hope and respect for these prisoners who weren’t.
I additionally respected the way Adjel-Brenyan dealt with the different problems that were in current prison systems and incorporated them into the story. Whether it be the mental illnesses that Link Simon J. Craft faces and prisoners in reality also deal with, or the dangerous work that prisoners face that is close to slavery, it saddened me that much of the story was a reality to prisoners in the United States and around the world. However, I truly enjoyed the way Adjel-Brenyan exposed these issues. Instead of putting facts upfront to the readers, he sneakily hides them in the context of a dystopian world, pulls the readers in, and then reveals that the world they thought was fictional never truly was.
I do recommend this book to anyone who can read it, and it is a good way to learn about prison and incarcerated conditions through a fictional world.
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