On Wednesday, October 16, the Word for Word Literary Series welcomed award-winning author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. His debut collection, Friday Black, was a New York Times bestseller, won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. His first novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Books Are My Bag Awards, and selected as a New York Times Top Ten Books of the Year. Adjei-Brenyah is a National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ honoree. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, Adjei-Brenyah now lives in the Bronx.
After reading from Chain-Gang All-Stars, Adjei-Brenyah answered questions from the audience and from associate deans Jacob Powers and Paul Witcover.
Following is a transcript of that Q&A, edited for the page.
W4W: I’ve seen Chain-Gang All-Stars referred to as satire. I wonder if you agree with that.
NKAB: A lot of the labels that are assigned to me, I receive them all gladly, but I don’t think I necessarily aspire to them. And so with satire, I think if you look at certain chapters, and certain depictions, certain characters, it probably would feel a little bit like satire. I’ve been thinking a lot about this because it gets attributed to me so much. When I think about satire, I think it’s the employ of humor to dissect, interrogate, criticize structures of power. And if that’s what it is, then, I guess I am it. But also, I think, sometimes satire suggests a distance from reality that is also not me. So I guess what I’m saying is, I take in all those things gladly, but I also know that, usually, they’re pretty limiting, even in my short stories and maybe even more so in this novel. So when people say it’s a satire, on some level it is, but—twelve years ago, anything Donald Trump does would have been considered a satirical skit, and here we are.
W4W: Writers like William Gibson and others have talked about the challenges in writing fiction, and speculative fiction for that matter, in the age of Trump, the age of climate change, and so on.
NKAB: It’s funny, because I didn’t even know what “speculative” was until I read it in a review. And I was like, “How dare you.” And then I looked up what “speculative” meant, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that is me.”
W4W: Your novel is firmly grounded in a recognizable world, even if it’s a future world. Your world-building is beautifully complex and grounded at the same time, so that every futuristic twist feels completely believable. Our MFA program is a genre-based program, and so world-building is an important craft element that we try to teach. What’s your secret?
NKAB: First off, I like and read genre things. But when I was growing up, when I was reading Animorphs, I didn’t think of it as reading sci-fi. I thought I was just reading a book. When I read Eragon as a kid, I didn’t think I was reading fantasy. I was genre agnostic. But also, I’m genre all-inclusive, is another way of thinking about it. In reading a lot of those things and not thinking of a distinction, I’ve decided that you always have to world-build. I was born in Queens, and then I was raised in a place called Spring Valley, Rockland County, New York. I know that if there’s a story set in Korea, on some level that world has to be built up for me. And if there’s a story set on Mars, on some level the world has to be built up for me. And I think just naturally, if you want to call it that, at first, anyway, I took in a principle, which I believe in now, which is I just mind my character’s business. What do I mean by that?
Say an alien landed on this planet, and you knew you had to get the alien from your school to the house, you wouldn’t be like, “OK, we’re in the sovereign nation called the United States, with three branches of government. And there’s a legislative branch. And there’s a legal tender called cash, but also it’s a fiat system.” There’s a lot of things you could talk about, but it’s not relevant. What matters is, “Put this thing on so you can breathe the air. Don’t let those things with lights and wheels hit you.”
I think there’s a magic to not overburdening the reader with information, respecting them enough to jump in and get it. I’m a student of George Saunders, and if you read his work, he doesn’t mind throwing you right in there. If you throw someone into a situation that has relatively high stakes, and those stakes are clear, the things that people don’t fully understand, a generous reader will allow. And then you can titrate in the world-building you need, again using what matters to the character as your north star.
W4W: I think you do that really well. The meaning of these things is not only apparent from context, but it’s slow . . . it accretes across the reading of the novel. As you get more and more information, you put it all together.
NKAB: In the case of Chain-Gang, I kind of cheated my way into hardcore, hardcore exposition with footnotes.
W4W: I was just going to mention the footnotes, because you do use them to bring exposition to the reader. But not just exposition. You use footnotes for all kinds of stuff. Can you talk a little bit about how you use footnotes in the novel?
NKAB: A big part of being a writer is being able to reverse engineer a feeling that arises in your person when you read something. So, OK, you like this. But why did you like it? You found that scary. But why? So with footnotes. I think I was trained to encounter them traditionally, mostly in academic texts, which I like. I’m a person who likes school. But what was a challenge for me is that I read The Art of Fiction. That was my first quote unquote “textbook.” John Gardner.
W4W: A great book, and a mentor text for students in the Online MFA.
NKAB: I read it on my own, just because I was starting to be interested in this craft. Gardner’s whole thing is you never break the fictive dream. That was my core tenet. It still is, a little bit.
And so something about footnotes, because of the way they work physically, your eye has to move from one space to the bottom of the page. The meta nature of a footnote announces the book as a book.
And so in some ways, they are incongruous with my fundamental approach to writing. That’s what I mean when I say “I don’t like them.” Because I feel like they quote unquote “take me out of it.” So why did I use them? I think because I am annoying, and I like to create difficulty for myself. But also, I think I was feeling a little bit limited by the linear nature of prose. And then I also knew that I wanted to do something really hard. I feel animated by a challenge that is a little bit above my ability.
The other thing about footnotes is when you get to them, it’s usually encyclopedic. It’s usually more information about whatever you just read. It’s like, OK, we’re going to go to school now. Which is great, but it’s a little bit predictable. So doing that reverse engineering, I know I don’t like the way they break up the fictive dream and the way they are super predictable. How can I attend to those things?
So now I was like, what if they operate almost like a roving eye that can just scan certain things? And so sometimes they are encyclopedic, but then what if I can add an elegiac voice? Now they sing for the dead, almost. Sometimes they have the consciousness of the character themselves, for a second. Sometimes they add little Easter eggs. Where there was monotony, now I’ve introduced some kind of dynamism. And that feels like fun to me.
I could actually talk much longer about this, but I won’t because that’s annoying. But those are some of the big things I was thinking about. Because to me, it was a really big craft challenge. And I’m really like a craft-first kind of guy.
But then it ended up feeling like one of the signatures of the book. And it felt really necessary. I mean, there were way too many at one point. My editor, Naomi Gibbs, helped me reel it in a little bit.
So for me, the footnotes were a way to add a lot of depth and richness, and do some world-building, while also just creating a fun user experience in the book, if you want to call it that.
W4W: Let’s shift to your collection, Friday Black. A lot of the short stories in that one focus on ethical and moral issues about capitalism, race. Of course, Chain-Gang is the prison system itself. Do you write with these themes in mind, or do they emerge as you write? And are there other themes or issues you haven’t explored yet in your writing that you’re hoping to write about in the future?
NKAB: I try my best not to be like, this will be the capitalism story, this will be the race story. Even with Chain-Gang, I don’t think I was like, this will be the prison story, if you can believe that. With Chain-Gang, I started with the idea of a woman in the eye of the arena, with her being treated a certain way. And I was like, well, only a prisoner would be able to be treated like this. And that was the seed of the book—of the story.
I have a lot of ideas. Especially as a short story writer, there’s a lot of ideas always competing. I think when I notice one might be concerned with something I’m concerned with in my lived life, I feel like I tend to nurture those ideas more, in terms of my mind’s eye, and eventually try to get them to the page.
I have a story called “Gone Gone” that’s not out yet. It’s about a world where everybody gets their first gun at age 13. You can guess what that’s about. But I didn’t set out to write a story about gun stuff. I just had that idea. And then, of course, pretty quickly, I’m not dumb, I could see down the line like that’s about that. And I cared to do it because we obviously have a huge problem in this country with guns. But I try not to pick what my stories are about in advance. And I think part of the problem with that story, actually, as I’m working on it, is that I realized what it was about too early, and it feels limiting.
I talked to George [Saunders] about this. And he said something really important to me. If the reader, the writer, and the protagonist are all on the same side of an issue, what’s the point of a story?
There’s a way to be really reductive and simple-minded, in my opinion, about the gun stuff. And I’m someone who thinks that we need gun control, and guns are quote unquote “bad,” just writing a story solely from that point of view feels limiting and boring. I’m interested in the nuance, and spaces, and how things are more complicated. And how can I be generous and think about people who are super, super pro-gun, super, mega NRA. They’re coming from a place that’s real too, for them. And being able to really honor that and think in that way meaningfully feels important to my project.
But that said, I care about a lot of stuff. And so it’s tricky. It’s getting trickier. I’m really, really interested—not to get hyper-political so fast—in the military’s use of white phosphorus, which continues to this day.
If people don’t know what white phosphorus is, it’s sometimes used for “cover,” supposedly, but it actually burns people’s skin. They die with these burns that you cannot put out. It’s a chemical agent, which, supposedly, shouldn’t be used.
But if you’ve read Chain-Gang, you’ve seen a lot of times, things that aren’t supposed to be used, America still uses. And white phosphorus is one of them. And it’s a chemical agent in chemical warfare, outlawed, Geneva, blah, blah, blah. Not blah, blah, blah, but, like, that’s my impression of America.
So I have that interest, right? But I don’t want to just jump right to it. I don’t want to write a story about it. But I’m almost hoping a story comes with that in mind. So it’s a little bit of a mix of both. I guess what I’m saying is, in the past, I think, when I answer this question, I say, don’t pick a topic at all. Because I feel like that’s false, or something, and feels not literary. But now I’m starting to realize I do nurture certain topics a little bit more. And if that’s not picking, it’s one step removed from it.
W4W: In the article “5 Story Collections That Make You a Better Writer,” that you posted back in 2018 with Publishers Weekly, you mentioned George Saunders, ZZ Packer, Bolano, Denis Johnson as influences. What other influences do you have? Not just your writing influences, but what else influences you? Are there specific video games, artists from music, movies, that have helped you pursue the writing you’re wanting to achieve?
NKAB: Obviously, everyone you just mentioned are some of my biggest inspirations. Denis Johnson, ZZ Packer . . . Karen Russell is another. Part of what I think is so dope about her, she’s going to make you think about something you’ve never thought about before, but it’ll actually be exactly what you’ve always been thinking about. She’s really imaginative that way. I like people who mess up the rules and do things that seem like they shouldn’t be able to pull off. Colson [Whitehead] is like that. I love interesting mechanics, I guess. The footnotes might be an example of that.
For games, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I really like something that makes you look at the whole thing different. Actually, the reason I’m thinking about white phosphorus is because of a video game called Spec Ops: The Line. You know, a lot of these video games now are just overt military propaganda, literally. In that one you end up fighting American soldiers, and you end up dropping white phosphorus on civilians that are innocent.
To think about, hey, the fact that you’re killing people in this game, have you ever interrogated that? I don’t know how Keanu Reeves, as someone who clearly cares about the world, can be the star of a franchise that’s so careless about life. I just don’t understand how you reconcile them.
John Wick inspires me too, because it’s so opposite of what I’m trying to do. And in some ways, part of why I had to have the footnotes also, to add another asterisk to that long answer I gave, is that I could not be John Wick. It would really bother me to become that.
I play Street Fighter. I’m regular. But I don’t know how we act like there’s no net effect of the kids playing Call of Duty non-stop, just shooting people. And I say this as someone who loves games. But I’ve been in those lobbies. I know what’s being said there. That’s the most racist, crazy place you’ve ever heard, racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic. It’s not a coincidence.
W4W: In Chain-Gang, readers become complicit in the violence. They’re like the bloodthirsty crowds watching the violence unfold in the arena, thirsty for murder. As I was reading the book, I caught myself thinking, wow, what a great movie this would make. But then I also thought, how could a movie possibly convey the duality and the depth that you pull off in the book? Because if it were a movie, it really would be John Wick. Do you worry something like that could happen?
NKAB: I’m in the process of trying to adapt it now. We’re trying to do a TV show. And it’s really scary. It’s really genuinely super scary. Like I said, I love video games. I’m a big fan of them. I think the indie game space is the most ambitious storytelling space that I have access to. But I also know that there’s a real problem with it. And the same problem exists in our general culture.
I’ve realized that the lore of violence is so strong. It’s a truth I employ in all my work, but Chain- Gang and maybe stories like “The Finkelstein 5” the most: the fact and reality of violence. There’s people who played that game I talked about, Spec Ops: The Line, who never thought about what we’re talking about. Because once you put the game of a gun in a hand and shoot those things, some people just—that’s all they see.
And so I’m afraid of that with my own work. Because my work does tend to be really violent. But that’s because the world is violent. And so in my own show, I have a lot of ideas. I’m interested in film, interested in directing. I want to be able to have meaningful input on every level. But I’m also terrified, because exactly of what you just said. It could be really, really bad, even morally bad, morally wrong. And my pledge I’m telling to myself is if somehow it gets away from me, and they do stuff I didn’t agree with, I will publicly denounce it. Don’t tell anybody I said that.
W4W: Your secret is safe with us. How do you find room within yourself to embrace the labels assigned to you, even if they don’t jibe with where you think you’re going, or who you think you are?
NKAB: I feel honored and lucky that people are reading me at all. I feel lucky to be talking to you guys right now. I feel lucky that the chat is here and super engaged. To me, it’s all a really big honor. I come from a place no one’s heard of. Spring Valley, Rockland County. I didn’t know any authors when growing up. It’s all very lucky.
Thich Nhat Hanh is someone I’ve been interested in for a little bit now. He’s a Buddhist teacher who passed recently. His first thing is, basically, no doctrine is worth dying for. Stay open to everything. Even Buddhism is not the answer. It’s like, all we do is make these labels, but they’re all really nothing. I try to have things in my life that ground me. I have the people that I actually know, and care about, and love. I do my meditation. I try my best to take care of myself as much as I can, and try not to let anything external define me.
There’s a tricky part with the success thing. My first book was a New York Times bestseller. And then Chain-Gang All-Stars, even though it was a “national bestseller,” it wasn’t on that particular list the first week. It was a week where Danielle Steele, and Stephen King, and a bunch of people also dropped. Which even saying that, you can see my ego trying to pop up. Without realizing it, I had started to attach the idea of New York Times bestseller to my identity. I started to wear that as part of myself. I think the act of putting out a book has taught me many times of how sinister and slick attachment can be.
Chain-Gang has ended up selling way more than Friday Black, but there was this thing, like I had failed somehow. That’s why I say, by having some type of awareness about those things and knowing yourself pretty good, you can help stave off those attachments to whichever label, good, bad, or whatever, and try your best to just be where you are.
W4W: Don’t you have to be attached to the process of your own writing? How do you balance that lack of attachment with the attachment that’s needed for good fiction?
NKAB: It’s tricky. For me, it helps by having a real aspiration that’s clear. I want my work to help us grow toward compassion, let’s say. I just try my best to stay on that path.
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