March/April 2024:
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Charles wrote the following reflection for the zoom meeting with the TCADP Book Club :
“How is it that in the narrative world that we live in today, the real is growing more unbelievable than the make-believe? A world where human beings continue to be sentenced to death, where the electric chair is making a comeback, and men are being being executed by suffocation when they’re strapped to a gurney with a gas mask over their face?
And why is it when people read Chain-Gang All-Stars, the feeling that they take away from this book is that it’s not that far from our reality today? A book that is so realistic that it makes the reader think that gladiators fighting to the death competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom, is not that far from reality?”
How is it that in the narrative world that we live in today, the real is growing more unbelievable than the make-believe? A world where human beings continue to be sentenced to death, where the electric chair is making a comeback, and men are being being executed by suffocation when they're strapped to a gurney with a gas mask over their face?
And why is it when people read Chain-Gang All-Stars, the feeling that they take away from this book is that it's not that far from our reality today? A book that is so realistic that it makes the reader think that gladiators fighting to the death competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom, is not that far from reality?
I am a Texas death row prisoner and have lived in a 9'x12" foot cell for the past twenty five years. In the quarter of a century that I've been locked this cage, some things have seemingly gotten better with a few more privileges given to us. But things have also gotten worse too.
This year prison correction officers have now been given tasers they can use to shock the recalcitrant prisoner into submission along with military grade tear gas, and riot gear they wear when dealing with the non compliant. And unfortunately, the individuals who are given this power over another have no business wielding life and death in their hands.
In Chain-Gang All-Stars we read about Simon J. Craft who is tortured with a super taser like weapon that drives him insane, ultimately causing him to choose to fight for CAPE, to being tortured with an "Influencer." When I read that part of this book, I immediately thought of these people now having tasers to use on us. Why?
Torture. Let me tell you the dirty truth about enduring torture. When you are the soul who is being subjected to torture you do not want to be counted among the victims of the penal systems in this country. I know for sure I don't. But the minute you are locked in a solitary confinement cell the torture begins. Something happens to you when you're caged like an animal, when you come out of it you're never ever the same person again.
While your enduring the torture you convince yourself that your normal, that you have not lost a part of yourself. But when you get close to " regular civilian " life you feel the otherness that you've become. When you find yourself at the hospital for medical treatment, you feel the change in you. When you go back to the courtroom after decades of living in a cage, you feel like an alien around normal people. You try and play it cool and act normal, but inside you know the truth.
When Loretta Thurwar realizes this I know intimately how she feels. No matter how strong she is, how hard she fights she's lost something of herself she'll never recover.And when Loretta has the realization that now, to complete their torture, they were going to make her destroy her favorite person if she wanted to achieve High Freedom. The person who had kept her on this earth. Who had kept her from separating herself from herself like the way Melancholia Bishop did.
That thought scared me. I immediately knew deep inside myself that I could not destroy the people that I have come to love like brothers here. And I was so, so grateful that I was spared this seventh level of hell.
Experiencing that through Chain-Gang All-Stars was intense. I do not think I've ever had such a visceral encounter with a book. And that is what makes Chain-Gang All-Stars such an amazing book!
“Suicide was a part of the CAPE culture. ... But despite the brutality of the march, it was in the more domestic stays prior to the BattleGround matches that most Links chose to separate themselves from themselves. It was when they returned to a life most like a civilian’s. When survival is difficult something in you begs the attempt. When it’s easy its a different thing entirely.
Free Hamara, free Loretta! The crowd screamed.
Thurwar, overcome by a spirit she did not dare smother, punched a fist into the air and the crowd screamed louder. A further affirmation of a truth Thurwar tried not to let too close: She was a human being tortured. That had been true before she’d joined CAPE and it had grown truer every moment of her life these past three years. It hurt to admit this, although it was something she couldn’t ever forget. But she had never had the truth she lived affirmed so brightly by people outside the Chains.
And now, to complete their torture, they were going to ask her to destroy her favorite person. The person who kept her on earth.”