#11 [2024/CBR16] Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

I picked up Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023) by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah because it was on a bunch of year-end lists and sounded interesting. In this book, American prisoners who are part of the CAPE program travel to different arenas around the country competing in death matches. The people who enjoy and/or profit from this program defend it because the prisoners are murderers themselves, and it was something the prisoners signed up for. It is gory and violent and makes some pointed commentary on America's justice system and imprisonment.

The book begins with a number of grisly fights to the death as we are introduced to the main characters: Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker. I have to say, I wasn't sure about this book when I started it. I was afraid that if the entire book was just going to be vicious and violent fights to the death, I wasn't going to get much out of it. But it turned out to be so much more. 

Thurwar and Staxxx are two women that have found genuine love in between the death, threats, and violence of their lives. They are on the same "team" in the CAPE program, which means they travel together and sometimes fight together. They have both been pretty successful, and Thurwar only has a couple of fights left before she can officially win her freedom.

CAPE (Criminal Action Prison Entertainment), although controversial, is very popular and makes a lot of money. But the book digs deeper into the different contestants, the prison system they came from, the corporation that runs the CAPE program, and the protestors who are trying to stop it.

Adjei-Brenyah sometimes uses a violent injustice that occurs in her book to bring up a real injustice that occurred in the United States. For instance, a sixteen-year-old boy who was in prison for murder joined the CAPE program, probably without a real understanding of what it meant. He stood helpless in the middle of the arena and was slaughtered by his opponent. The description of a kid being brutally murdered in front of a cheering crowd is pretty dark. But in a footnote, Adjei Brenyah adds that he's not even the youngest to be killed by the U.S. justice system. In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney was electrocuted in South Carolina for the murder of two young white girls. George was ninety pounds, and there was no evidence that he had murdered anyone. Only white people were allowed at the trial, and his attorney (a tax attorney) called no witnesses. This case has always deeply disturbed me as I imagine that poor, scared kid facing the hopeless and racist justice system all by himself.

What sticks with me the most when I think back on this book were how individuals were affected by various aspects of the CAPE program and the justice system. There was the woman whose father was killed in the CAPE program shortly before he may have won his release. There was the bond between Thurwar and Staxx that was twisted and used for entertainment because it would be dramatic--no matter the harm it does to them. There was the woman who researched pain because she had wanted to--but couldn't--spare her father from pain while he was dying from cancer. But then her research is taken and twisted to use to control prisoners. There is the prisoner who loses his mind when a sadistic guard overuses the pain control device. And there are prisoners who sign up to kill or be killed because it is a better alternative than where they are now.

Although this book took me a little while to get into and understand, I thought it was very moving and very powerful. Recommended.