Summer's Buzziest Sci-Fi Debut Confronts America's For-Profit Prison System

Goodreads: There is so much going on in this novel. You've got this amazing cast of characters and then also the social commentary that you're layering in. How did you come up with the idea for this book?

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: I thought it was going to be a short story. Right from the beginning, I had an idea of this woman, in the eye of an arena with everybody looking at her, reflecting on a long journey she's had to go through. Eventually, I understood that she was a convicted felon who’d done something terrible, and as a punishment, she had done more terrible things.
 
As it was happening, I was thinking about prisons and policing and the carceral system more explicitly. Once I started to stick my toe into doing the research on that subject, it became clear that it was way too much for me to try to pack into one story.

GR: So how long did it take you to take the idea from short story to completing the novel?

NKAB: It was about seven years. By the time the book comes out, it will be eight-ish.

GR: How did you develop the characters and the plots around them into a cohesive narrative?

NKAB: I remember asking Angela Flournoy [about this] when she came to visit at Syracuse. I don't know if you've read The Turner House, but there were a lot of characters in that book. She said, basically, when it came down to every character, even the ones that feel more tertiary, they somehow come back to either the eldest or youngest, the two main characters in that book.
 
For me, I have Loretta Thurwar, maybe the central pillar for me. Then right beside her is [her lover and teammate] Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker. And everything else has to flow through them, even if they don't appear [in a chapter] at all. In the reader’s mind, there has to be a connection between Thurwar and whoever, or Staxxx [and another character]. You see it explicitly, or it may sometimes be more spiritually or feeling-wise, or in a way that we don't fully understand until later in the book.
 
I have the essential pillars that become the superstructure—their desire for freedom becomes the main thrust of energy, the journey through the book. Everyone else, in some way, informs that path. People like Hendrix “Singer” Young, or Simon Craft, besides being on their own journeys, they inform us of the parts that we didn't get to see for Thurwar, in the early aspects of being a Link. It's also another perspective of what Thurwar and Staxxx are aware of and what they're trying to make their Chain not [be].
 
Once you have that load-bearing part being Thurwar and Staxxx, you can build off from them and think about the full orchestra of sounds that can inform their lives at the center of this thing called Chain-Gang All-Stars.

GR: It struck me as particularly clever that you take something so antiquated, like a chain gang, and you bring it into the 21st century. How'd that happen?

NKAB: There’s a lot of documentation about the explicit history between American slavery and the carceral system. Chain gangs are clearly a part of that. That's one piece that was on my mind. I also wanted community between prisoners, and I wanted it outside of the prison. A big part of our current indifference toward the massive injustice with prisoners is its hidden nature. It's behind the walls. So I wanted it outside. I wanted the characters to be moving around dynamically through spaces. 
 
To your point about the antiquatedness, the argument I'm making, implicitly or explicitly, is the whole carceral system as we have it is extremely antiquated. The fact that America is an “advanced democracy” that still murders its citizens for crime, that feels extremely antiquated. I guess the electric chairs are more developed than gallows, but to me, it's the same thing.
 
A big part of what I'm saying and thinking through is the idea that because we are afraid, we don't look at the problem of people doing harm with great nuance or care and compassion, because our responses are fear-based. Therefore, we’re always in this super-hyper-antiquated approach toward building communities. [The idea that] prisons, incarceration, and policing are essential pieces of a thriving society…to me, that whole entire view is antiquated.

GR: How did you do your research?

NKAB: I do a lot of reading, a lot of following of people like [Ruth Wilson] Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Angela Davis.… I work with a group called the Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow. I had some experiences learning and listening from people who have formerly been incarcerated, like someone incarcerated speaking on the phone at the meeting.
 
I didn't choose to go physically into a prison for this book. I spoke a lot with people who have been incarcerated and people who are in prison. I read a lot of their work. Just a lot of reading on the history, and demystifying what prison is and its inefficacy. It's not only not natural, but it's fairly new. A lot of it is newish, especially in thinking about privatization. It's important to know the history to remember that we can change it anyway we want to, really, and just have to believe that.

GR: One thing that I enjoyed particularly in the book is the footnotes. I have my own thoughts, but I would love to hear you talk about adding footnotes to complement the narrative.

NKAB: I actually hate footnotes, usually. Or I thought I did.

Usually when I write, there's gonna be a sort of engagement or entertaining aspect. As a teacher, as my pedagogical foundation, and as a writer, it has to be fun. The experience should fun, with an asterisk next to it or in italics, because it's not going to be just fun or enjoyable; it's going to be a complicated type of enjoyment.
 
A core tenet of that engagement is maintaining a fictive dream. I read the John Gardner book on writing way early, and I internalize this idea that you never, ever break the fictive dream for a reader.
 
Footnotes break that up in some ways. They remind you explicitly that you're reading a text. And that was important to me because I didn’t want [readers] to get lost in the “fun” of the book. I didn't want the thing I was talking about to be lost in the potentially entertaining aspects.

GR: Two of my favorite Links were the One-Arm Scorpion and Simon Craft. Can you talk about the relationships that develop in this book? Links as family seems to be a big theme. What were you thinking when you were pairing these unlikely people together who develop very strong bonds?

NKAB: One of my favorite things is when someone you kind of hate—really hate—becomes someone you love. Sometimes love and hate is just a matter of how close you are to the person and how close you are willing to look at them.
 
With the different sorts of Chains, I wanted to suggest that if someone can set a standard, that standard can be met. In the case of Thurwar and Staxxx saying, “This is the new standard,” and people in their own way, struggling or not, can rise up to it. Just by being near each other and trying to have a spirit of care, family can form.
 
Compassion is really, really, really, really, really one of the important words not only for this book, but my attitude toward my purpose as an artist.
 
With Singer and Craft, Craft is a morally reprehensible person. I wanted to not pull any punches about that. So, torture him. What did that do for anybody? How did that heal anything? How did that solve anything except make the net suffering in the world higher?
 
Singer, for a lot of different reasons of his own, is willing to extend compassion to this person who he has every right to really hate. And because the person has been broken by suffering, as everyone is in some way, shape, or form, just that his is very explicit. Having a couple of key characters who are willing to choose compassion—despite—allows for these families to flourish, and those families are one of the more important aspects of the book.

GR: How did you write your fight scenes? Do you watch American Gladiators? Where do you get your information to make these things come alive in text?

NKAB: I remember one of my mentors telling me that anything can be literary if you break it down to its component parts. What I do is I tried to get into the mindset of—slow down, slow down. Moment to moment, just break it down [what is happening] to its component parts.

But also, maybe more importantly, I try to think about the emotional state of the person. I try to find ways of weaving in the emotional state of the participants, as best I can, while still mostly favoring the physical component parts of what they're doing and hope somewhere in weaving those things together—and a lot of revision—you can get something that hopefully feels comprehensible, but then also emotionally significant and satisfying.

GR: Follow on to that—this book is speculative, dystopian, fight-club-to-the-end. That has been written before. How did you keep everything fresh and…such a nail-biter?

NKAB: So many stories have been told already. Relationships breaking down, for example. For a writer, for us, being able to trust in your sentence-level ability to perceive and appreciate where magic can lie.
 
This story—there's a much more intimate version where you never see the big arenas. I think this book works because I feel just as connected to the quietest moment as I do to the biggest, most raucous, bloodiest thing. For me, it's all about that moment-to-moment appreciation.
 
If it’s speculative fight-club-to-the-death or it’s two partners talking about their day or protesters chanting outside or it's people eating a sandwich, I try to make it as real as possible, and try to be compassionate toward the characters in their emotional state and whatever circumstances are pressing on them.
 
I feel like if I can do that, whatever I write can have the freshness you're talking about.

GR: The sandwich and the meals that they eat—how intentional were meals relating to the prison system and particularly with death row?

NKAB: Because of the Links, every meal might be their last meal. And so the meals have that significance for that reason, so it becomes this incentive thing. You have to be someone who has a lot of points like Thurwar to eat as well as she does. I tried to find every place I could mine cruelty, because that's what the prison system does in real life.

GR: Let's do some lightning-round questions. Who is your favorite Link?
 
NKAB: It’s so hard…Staxxx. Heart, you know, she has a heart. She's not afraid to be “unpractical.” She believes in a higher self, and I really respect that and admire that in her.
 
GR: How did you come up with the names of the Links?
 
NKAB: The names, I don't know. Probably wrestling or boxing the way they have their name, like their nicknames, tied to what they do. I don't really know. I can say it was a huge headache for me. Every day I resented myself for creating the concept of it because—I don't know how many names are in this book, but it's got to be like 60.
 
GR: Did you map things out so that you could keep track of all the characters?
 
NKAB: I didn't outline for many years, which probably cost me years. I used Scrivener for this book. With Scrivener you can make your chapters. But then also in Scrivener I have character sheets, almost like in Dungeons and Dragons, with a person's name, their real name, their weapon, their short biography. I needed it to keep track of these characters, but I just did it with my main people, not for everybody.

GR: Why name the weapons?
 
NKAB: It’s just cool! You have to. But also, with great warriors, it's part of the tradition. Knowing the name of a sword kind of unlocks its power. It just builds the legend; it just builds up. Especially with Thurwar, it's essentially a cornerstone. Her weapon, [the hammer] Hass Omaha, it's inherited and it having that name that she didn’t give it, it creates this legacy.
 
GR: Do you have a favorite book? What is your favorite genre?
 
NKAB: I know I don't have a favorite genre. I embrace them all. I love sci-fi. I love fantasy. I love realism. I love Gothic, Southern Gothic. I think it's all cool, so I don’t have a favorite genre, and I don’t think I have a favorite book either. I recommend books all the time, and it’s very personalized—there’s not one across the board.
 
George Saunders, for example, is one of my mentors and professors, too. It’s easy for me to say that Pastoralia is one of my favorite books ever. But a lot of my friends will not like that—it’s not their thing. I would probably give them Tenth of December because I think it’s more accessible to readers.
 
I teach, so I think a lot about curating reading lists. I like to meet my students where they are. And so I like to meet people where they are, too.
 
To me, especially with my younger kids, I'm growing generous readers. I'm allowing them the leeway to not love everything and try to get them to see if there's some way they could see themselves or some way they can insert themselves [in the book]. I think that the “canon” misses the mark a lot because they favor things where kids can not only not see themselves but are necessarily disqualified from even being remotely close to the conversation about it.
 
GR: Let me reframe the question: What books are you teaching now?
 
NKAB: If I were teaching right now, George Saunders' Tenth of December: Stories, I love Z.Z. Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. I'm reading a book right now that I love called Greenwood by Michael Christie.
 
Sonny’s Blues is one of James Baldwin’s more famous stories. For me, what’s so magical about it—and in a weird way this applies directly to Chain-Gang, even though it feels very disparate—toward the end of the book, these brothers are in a club. One of them plays piano, and everybody is in the crowd watching. And similar to choreography, or fighting, it's hard to describe with words the experience of listening to music. But that story probably does it as well as any book you've ever read. It talks about how music is really a conversation and how different instruments are working through something together.
 
It’s very teachable for me because there's a thing and there's a thing behind the thing.

GR: What’s the thing behind the thing for Chain-Gang All-Stars?

NKAB: In Chain-Gang All-Stars, the thing is super-ridiculous, over-the-top action sports killing.

The thing behind the thing is that is what we are doing now, by a different name. That's really sad because I don't think we've agreed to do it, but by our indifference, it’s a different type of paying for our ticket. That we are very much aware that we live in a space, or at least a country, that directly murders and how that flows through the rest of our consciousness.

The thing behind the thing is this massive, massive, massive indifference to the fact that we don't have compassion as our standard and we could.
 
GR: And then, last question: What is the one thing you want people to remember at the end of this story?
 
NKAB: Thurwar says something toward the end of the book, basically like, “Just because you haven't seen something before doesn't mean it's impossible.” I really hope that readers can be reminded that the exact world we hope for is possible. And we should act like it's attainable and move like it's attainable. We should believe that we can be the best version of ourselves. And I think it's very unlikely that prisons would exist in that ideal version.

I hope that readers' imaginations toward life and positivity and growth and compassion might be charged up just a little bit.