CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As I read this, I felt like one of the spectators of these violent games; a little skeptical and a little guilty and maybe a little squeamish at first, only to become fully enraptured with the action unfolding. Invested in these players, in these relationships. In the infrastructure of a world that allows them to exist. On paper, this story should captivate you by its dust-jacket blurb alone. In practice, it does that and more. This is a feat in social justice commentary.

I liked this more and more as I read on. There is really exceptional writing in numerous parts, especially when we focus on Simon J. Craft and the complete horror of his treatment. The line “I spend the fifty-five minutes afraid to go back in” shook me so hard. You’ll understand why when you get there.

The best parts are the ones that reflect our own reality, and the constant footnotes reminding you this isn’t all that far across the fiction/nonfiction line. Can you honestly imagine a tournament of convicts forced to fight to the death for our entertainment? I think at this point, in the year of our lord 2024, nothing would surprise me anymore. And that’s why this works (and hurts) as much as it does.

In ways almost a spiritual sequel to The New Jim Crow, it lands somewhere between The Hunger Games and 'Idiocracy' in dystopian madness, working to expose the justice system, the media, and the power of conglomerates to control the masses and how they think. None of it is that surprising anymore, but some of the real facts spouted in the footnotes might be. And it all adds up to one fucking wicked world we (and these characters) live in.

*Not to dampen things, but — as I finished the final page last night, it was hard not to think of the shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade within earshot of where I was yesterday, and all the violence in our world and our country. How it’s become commonplace, almost expected. With no action on the horizon, no matter the future cost. As a cis-white male, I have the least to worry about of anyone. But I still worry for others. I worry about my daughter and her generations’ place in all of this. And I worry about the day I’ll have to start explaining any of it to her.

I hold out hope some things will have changed by then.