Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s incredible debut Friday Black is a harrowing peak into the ways a lack of love and empathy have wormed their way into the heart of society. Racial injustice, class struggles, violence, profiling, war, misogyny, genocide, all theses and more feast on the absence of love and fear-monger love away in order to attain power. On the last page I should write ‘I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.’ It seems so simple: to love and to be loved, and one can look to the beauty and love in the world and feel hope but yet far too often we look about and see the absence of love creeping its way like a shadow at dusk through human interactions. ‘ If I had to write a book on morality,’ author and existentialist Albert Camus once wrote in his notebooks, ‘ it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. ‘ Every inch of my black skin painted the maroon of life.’ Everyone should read this book.Įxtra excited to read Chain-Gang All-Stars now! I can’t recommend this collection highly enough. Stories that present hard issues in ways that make it impossible for the reader to not have an emotional response.Ĭongratulations Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Then, upon finishing the last story, realised the necessity of this book. All 12 stories hit me in the heart and every time one concluded, I sunk a little deeper into the soul of this collection. His command of language is pure, authentic, and strong. The satire hits with a punch and sometimes the violence is shocking and sometimes it's a little shocking how normal it feels. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is so incredibly skillful at creating worlds that deal with heightened, sharper versions of issues to which we tend to numb ourselves.
Talking foetuses, racism as sport and deadly Black Friday sales are just some of the wild scenarios in this book. It's dystopian, political, a commentary on black lives in America. I love short stories, and this collection is in a league of its own. They're always looking at the ground.”įriday Black left me absolutely speechless. They feel it so much you can see it in everything they do. The shoelookers don't feel anything but sad. People say that if you tell a lot of lies you eventually start being all depressed and weepy like them. “Shoelookers don't really do anything to anybody except make them proud to be themselves and not a no-good shoe-looker.
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