Aug. - Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "Chain Gang All Stars" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Book Description:
"“This book is so good. Brutal subject matter, beautiful writing. This one is from the heart.” —Stephen King

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews

“Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so…illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing.” —The Washington Post

She felt their eyes, all those executioners…

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are com­peting for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thur­war and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate own­ers will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review)."

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Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

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Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing