Sneaking in more books before the end of the month. I have a couple of novellas I’m hoping to finish up, but we’ll see how it goes!
A big thank you to Vintage Anchor Books for the gifted copy
CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Paperback Release January 23rd, 2024)
Book Description:
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.
My Thoughts: 5/5 stars
So when I initially heard the super basic description of this book – inmates fighting for their lives to get freedom while the prison collects the money from streaming it – I thought of Death Race. Well, I regret having that in my mind when starting because this was SO MUCH MORE than an action-packed and mindless read. Battle Royale, Hunger Games, Gladiators – making the fight for their lives a spectacle for the masses. Televised, generating money, making the prisons and government richer, while dangling the prospect of the POSSIBILITY of gaining their freedom.
After reading other reviews and chatting with other readers, the trauma radiating out of this story is something I will only get the surface of in terms of understanding. The book itself was so hard to put down but it was equally hard to get through. It’s a story that is incredibly dark, and the inmates experience unimaginable trauma, systemic racism, and the overreaching power of the government and capitalism.
It’s hard to rate this book, but if you can stomach the above trigger warnings, then I highly recommend giving this a read. The writing is crisp, the story is immersive and emotionally impacting, and the author creates a dystopian world that doesn’t feel like it’s out of the realm of possibility. Which is even scarier to think about.
Jessicamap Reviews 