Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Content Tags: Murder, Death, Corporal Punishment, Torture, Systemic Racism

Description from Storygraph:

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of 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 Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for 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, she 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).

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I have been slacking on posting this review!

Much like Rust in the Root, this book was incredibly impactful and had such a powerful message. Though, where Rust in the Root depicted the past, Chain-Gang All-Stars depicted the future. And the future it presented really doesn't seem too far off or far fetched.

The choice of every little detail that was included was so artful in perfectly displaying the hypocrisy and absurdity of the way that people behave and the heinous things that have been normalized in the United States, in particular. There were so many passages that excellently pointed out how people will justify the awful things they support.

I think everyone should read this book, especially to learn all the information that was included by the author about various facts and history about the prison system.

Book Reflection Wrap-up:

Would you want to read another book by this author?

Yes. The writing was so balanced and kept me engaged through everything. And this is one of the first male authors I've read that I couldn't tell by the way he wrote about the women. 

What surprised you most about the book?

Honestly, nothing. It's not surprising at all the heinous things that have been done in the name of supposed justice. And this future that was presented would not surprise me at all if it came to fruition in real life.

July Book Club Book