Chain Gang All Stars

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Chain Gang All Stars ISBN: 9780593317341, 9780593317334 Kindle / ASIN: B0B5ST3XX4 Genre: Science Fiction Goodreads Rating: Hardcover, 384 pages Published: 2023 Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. 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. 2023 - ePub verification and revisions by zardox This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Name: Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame, author. Title: Chain-gang all-stars : a novel / Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Description: First Edition. New York : Pantheon Books, 2023 Identifiers: LCCN 2022017029 (print) | LCCN 2022017030 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593317334 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593317341 (ebook) | ISBN 9780375715402 (open-market) Subjects: LCGFT: Novels. Classification: LCC PS3601.D49 C48 2023 (print) | LCC PS3601.D49 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022017029 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022017030 Ebook ISBN 9780593317341 www.pantheonbooks.com Cover design and illustration by Kimberly Glyder ep_prh_6.1_143326502_c0_r0 For my dad, who said, “There’s nothing quite like helping someone in need, nothing quite like it.” Contents The Freeing of Melancholia Bishop Part I Hurricane Staxxx B3 Teacup The Bandwagon Electric Hendrix “Scorpion Singer” Young The Van Personhood Link Circuit Sports Central Salt Bath Simon The New Food Door Four Stable Part II Simon Craft Children of Incarcerated People Vega The Board Melee To Be Influenced The Art of Influence Sing-Attica-Sing Vacation Grounded Simon J. Craft Sung Babe? The Ride McCleskey Hamara Presser We the Enslaved Interview Kai Balloon Archway The Farmers Market Deane’s Creams This Part III Sunset Harkless Tear Gas The Legend of One-Arm Scorpion Singer Hendrix and the Unkillable Jungle Craft Bad Water The Regional Preparation The Drive The Morning Of Shareef The Feeling Yes Through the Door Season 33 Suck My Dick, America Blackout Game Colossal Freeing Day Loretta Thurwar Acknowledgments A Note About the Author _143326502_ I hope the Universe love you today —Kendrick Lamar The Freeing of Melancholia Bishop She felt their eyes, all those executioners. “Welcome, young lady,” said Micky Wright, the premier announcer for Chain-Gang All-Stars, the crown jewel in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program. “Why don’t you tell us your name?” His high boots were planted in the turf of the BattleGround, which was long and green, stroked with cocaine-white hash marks, like a divergent football field. It was Super Bowl weekend, a fact that Wright was contractually obligated to mention between every match that evening. “You know my name.” She noticed her own steadiness and felt a dim love for herself. Strange. She’d counted herself wretched for so long. But the crowd seemed to appreciate her boldness. They cheered, though their support was edged with a brutal irony. They looked down on this Black woman, dressed in the gray jumpsuit of the incarcerated. She was tall and strong, and they looked down on her and the tight coils of black hair on her head. They looked down gleefully. She was about to die. They believed this the way they believed in the sun and moon and the air they breathed. “Feisty,” Wright said with a grin. “Maybe that’s what we should call you—Little Miss Feisty.” “My name is Loretta Thurwar,” she said. She looked at the people all around her. There were so many of them, so many waves of humans who would never be the object of such cruel attention. Would never know how it made you feel, both tiny and all-powerful. How the thrum of thousands was so loud, so constant, it could disappear from your ears but continue to roar as something felt in the body. Thurwar gripped the weapon she’d been given: a thin spiraling corkscrew with a cherrywood handle. It was light and simple and weak. “Not Little Miss Feisty, then?” Wright said, walking a wide orbit around her. “No.” “That’s probably for the best, Loretta.” He stepped toward his box. “I hate wasting good names anyway.” He laughed and the crowd echoed him. “Well, Loretta Thurwar”—he threw his playful condescension directly at her, chopping her first name into three hard syllables, using a singsong child’s voice for her last—“welcome to the BattleGround, baby.” There was an electric cough in the air and Thurwar was pulled down so forcefully she feared for a moment her arm had been dislocated at the shoulder. Kneeling, not knowing what else to do, she started to laugh. Chuckling