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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah blew up with his poignant dystopian novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, reaching a broader audience as a Read With Jenna Book Club pick and hitting the literary crowd as a National Book Awards Finalist in Fiction. But it was his debut short story collection that turned me into an instant fan. Mind you, it was also a New York Times bestseller and won multiple literary awards, so I’ll not call it an under-the-radar read. Still, I’m guessing plenty of people who picked up his debut novel haven’t gotten around to checking out his short stories, and that’s why I’m here to proclaim that this writer shines in that concise format.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Almost on cue, as November pokes its head around the corner every year, I think about Adjei-Brenyah’s titular story, “Friday Black.” If you’re a fan of zombie movies and books, you’ve likely heard tell of George Romero’s zombie flicks as a critique of consumerism. Mall zombies and all that. Adjei-Brenyah makes the critique explicit in a gripping dark satire following a star salesman facing down the hordes with his coworkers at a mall one Black Friday (the mall and its denizens reappear in a couple more stories, so this isn’t the last you see of them). It’s difficult to tell whether you’re reading speculative horror or the account of a Black Friday at a retail store in our current reality (impending recession aside).
Adjei-Brenyah’s has a talent for spinning contemporary and historical terrors and cultural crises into stories that take you on a thought-provoking journey. They expose the fissures and cracks in our society, created by racism, injustices, and violence, that threaten to deepen and expand. They elicit the full gamut of emotions using everything from absurdism to sharp rebuke. These stories aren’t for the faint of heart. There’s a tale, for instance, depicting gamified racism where white people of all ages pay to point their fear-stoked aggressions and their guns at Black people. The stories involving murder and violence inflicted on children hit me the hardest, but Adjei-Brenyah is nothing short of thoughtful and purposeful in telling these stories. It is disturbing and absurd that racism and gun violence are the norm. It is horrifying that callousness dominates when we’re talking about the suffering of our most vulnerable populations, that is, when the vulnerable are Black and Brown.
Friday Black is one of the strongest short story collections I’ve read to date. It’s an all-time favorite and an instant classic.
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