Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahFriday Black

This book was so good

You read it, and each story strings out a little at a time. Then you reach a point, not always at the end, that just hits you so hard, or makes you think deeply. You owe it to yourself to read it, because you’ll feel better at the end, even if it’s not always happy.

Good horror can come from a variety of places and to various effect. Jump scares, gore, serial killers, quiet seething. In some cases it can come from just barely exaggerating the conditions of a class of people. Friday Black is obviously the latter.A series of short stories, all more or less loosely connected by the horror of being black under the particularly vicious capitalism adopted by the United States. All stories feature a particularly unflinching examination of the violence of this all, varying from the direct violence of black people being lynched, to the indirect violence of a consumerist society, one that worships Mammon. To say much more, I feel, would spoil too much. The stories shocked my not easily shocked senses and the author has a disturbingly clear view of how a violent mind and society can operate. You'll simply have to read the stories, and hopefully with this trigger warning: it's not for the faint of heart.

Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s collection of short stories is stunning. Absolutely stunning. The first two—The Finkelstein 5 and The Era are chilling in their depiction of and resemblance to today’s society. There is a lovely vignette titled “Things My Mother Said” interspersed between but it is more aphorism than story. The Era imagines a dystopian future, while F5 is a slight exaggeration of today’s racist tropes and behavior (so slight as to be truly terrifying).What is different about F5 is the response of Emmanuel and a band of enraged blacks that have finally had enough. Its rage and its righteousness cut to the quick. Both stories shine and resonate with a sparse prose embellished by tremendous passion and fury or the opposite—a zombie-like stasis induced by “The Good”. The Era freezes the soul with an indifference to the disenfranchised that is merely a tilt in the lens from the present day.In both tales real emotion; true feeling and experience is continually repressed, denied, delayed until it simmers and then boils over with explosive consequence. In F5 the author calculates “blackness” on a scale of 1-10 in ways that are hilarious and heartbreaking. Every black person, especially men, must tamp it down to get by, though none can ever eliminate it entirely. The Hospital Where is a pitch-perfect immersion into the role of the story-teller and the fears and indignities inflicted upon the poor and the vulnerable. Dollops of magical realism remind the reader of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon--without the soaring souls.Other stories are equally impressive; one or two, not so much. Lark Street, an imagining of a teenage girl’s aborting twin fetuses with the RU486 pill and her young boyfriend’s interaction with their unborn seemed contrived. For me though it was the exception. Zimmer Land is an interesting hybrid shining a harsh light on Florida's Stand Your Ground law and the violent obsession of men with gaming. It feels though more like an episode of Black Mirror than a short story but perhaps that's the point. The last story, Through The Flash is a hybrid like none I've ever seen--Groundhog Day meets Fight Club meets Mad Max. Terrifying but affirming.Very few of these tales miss the mark by much, or at all. Most have that intrinsic quality found in all great literature—familiar and specific to a time and place (or people) but universal in themes and emotion. Friday Black is a great accomplishment; Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is an enormous talent. Highly recommended.

in Finklestein Five, the character emmanuel regulates his blackness on a scale from ten to one, ten being the black man perceived by white society as a threat, and one is the black man able to merge into mainstream society based on the disappearance of any trace of blackness in dress and diction. his scale is thrown off kilter when a white man armed with a chain saw cuts off the heads of five black children standing outside a library. his court defense, he felt threatened. this is one of a few themes explored by adjei-brenyah, based on ideas discussed by toni morrison, the creation of a fictional character absent of racial identifiers as she showed in her novel, Paradise, situating a white woman in a group of black women without telling the reader which character was the white woman. Finklestein Five is a story of how racial neutrality as a gauge for acceptance and safety is impossible.in other stories, written as racial neutral, adjei-brenyah explores morrison’s idea closer. as he scrutinizes contemporary issues, one gets the impression the world is crazy enough without obsession of the racial other.the issues of our times, teen suicide, racial hatred, the calloused superiority of retail workers controlling shoppers lusting for material goods with bargains and sales, and tales of life after the apocalypse, explored by adjei-brenyah are closer to the footsteps of colson whitehead than cormac mccarthy, though readers of mccarthy should not overlook adjei-brenyah’s stories.the story Friday Black takes place in a big-box-store on black friday, the customers out for blood, literally, in their desire for one-time bargains. they grunt disconnected phrases about brand name products, a language not understood by many service workers, pressed to repel hordes of shopper zombies with sale items and deep cut bargains.imagine that george saunders and peter straub at his most gory as nana kwame adjei-brenyah’s uncles.when adjei-brenyan isn’t reveling in graphic violence he’s writing about mind numbing experiences of attending school within a dystopian system or working a low paying job, and questions what if these situations were forever.there’s an intelligence at work here, not a pretty intelligence, but it’s here. nana kwame adjei-brenyah is the kind of writer you want to hear more from.

Thoroughly recommend this book to everyone and anyone who's even remotely interested in modern American issues. And even if you're not, what's included is transcendent, and exposes insitutionalised racism and rampant capitalism for what they are; destructive forces.If I could rate it higher than five stars, I would. Buy this book. It deserves to be read.

A wonderful collection of powerful and highly original stories. Highly recommended.

One of those books theat makes you want to meet the author and understand the mind that creared this. Great writing, just very jarring at times.

An impressive read that hits hard on reality!

A short book of too short stories. Looking forward to a full blown novel from this excellent author.