Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: "The black people murdered have become acceptable. I want it to be less the case! Books

MTying famous writers never makes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah feel "strange or corny," he says. After all, George Saunders was his university tutor and later became a friend. Writer Lynne Tillman was her mentor. Gay Roxane has stamped a cover quote on black friday, his first collection of news, urging the world to simply "read this book".

Since its publication last fall, Adjei-Brenyah has had ample opportunity to test his reaction to the meeting with his literary heroes – moments like the February night when he had unexpectedly won the book prize of the year at the PEN Awards. Zadie Smith was sitting right behind him as they read his name. "She looked so royal and epic – her aura is so strong. And Zadie Smith had read my book! The 28-year-old, stunned and radiant, exudes confident, effervescent energy – even though he describes it as a blanket. "I must be aware of all [of this]otherwise I will become crazy, "he says.

"Before this book arrived, I was on a plane three times in my life … Now I'm on a plane every day and it's crazy. It's really absurd to think that people – and that's the coolest part – live so far from where I come from, have read my book and have felt something about it , you know? "He was not so sincerely excited, may seem overly erased. "It's weird … As I'm supposed to come into this room and think it's Ordinary? "This is a small meeting room at his London publisher; the walls are lined with dozens of copies of his book. Adjei-Brenyah is a jet lag, which he blames for being "at least 25% less funny". Yet all this should be his new normal. black friday is wonderful. Adjei-Brenyah puts us in the near and dark future, "a world a little worse than ours," he explains, "so perhaps, collectively, we could imagine a much better world."

The dozen stories have been written over the last eight or nine years, relentlessly, and chosen by him in a bank of about 80 people. "Let's say 70 of those 80 are garbage. No, really, they would have never been so terrible … One idea is not enough, you can have a thousand good ideas every day. Usually, I have someone's voice in the minds for the stories that are unfolding. "

The stories that made the final cut were edited with precision to work together as a conceptual album; In rhythm, style and rhythm, Adjei-Brenyah offers an extremely creative collection that does not deal so much with race, capitalism, violence, poverty, abortion and the injustice she tells. from top to bottom with blood and courage. Very confident, he is motivated by the idea that "they might be able to help somebody to feel seen. I thought that they could push the conversation in a direction that mattered. "

Adjei-Brenyah's work is often described as "timely" and black friday opens with "The Finkelstein 5", a visceral account of murdered black children, beheaded by a chainsaw attacker. And that does not give up. He imagines a dystopia in which corpses are swept away from the floors of the Black Friday balances; where aborted gray and dry fetuses fight and argue for affection. In reference to the murderer of teenager Trayvon Martin, he creates Zimmer Land: a theme park allowing whites to play brutal fantasies against people of color. Saunders describes the stories in black friday "Strange, crazy, urgent and funny" – and you can imagine filmmakers such as Jordan Peele or Kahlil Joseph projecting them on the screen.

"Time is running out," said Adjei-Brenyah, slightly tired. "I think the scary thing is that [these problems have] been there for so long … there is some way of black murder that has become acceptable. I want it to be less so. " black friday is considered timely, he says, because the subjects he has treated all his life have finally reached the mainstream. "My book is absorbed as is and amplified because people want to think about these kinds of issues now.

"The willingness of people to think about it is good, but the problems we are trying to solve may take a long time to resolve. It is terrifying to think about what will happen in the next election, but I think that overall, we hope that the trend is towards something better.

For the moment, he is concerned about the superrich. It does not include the accumulation of wealth in an unfairly unjustified world, where one person can live on the street while the other has 10 homes. "I'm used to saying," Let me transfer $ 7 from this account to this account to have enough money to withdraw $ 20. "Suddenly you win this prize. [the PEN award of $75,000] and I can not even understand exactly … I feel guilty. I'm like, you know, is someone allowed to have this at the same time? So what do these billionaires feel?

"It's obviously morally wrong. It's inherently unsustainable. He looks puzzled, still without knowing the thread. "The government regulates the amount of money in circulation, it's a pot that everybody has to share, it's not like it's coming out of nowhere. So you, as [a rich] can take someone else's money, taking it directly. It's like having an endless buffet and people starving next to you and not feeding them. That's what you do every day. "

As a son of Ghanaian immigrants to the United States – a father-in-law and a teacher mother – whose health and finances have suffered so much in their new country, Adjei-Brenyah is wary of the merits of the case. America to badociate "morality with things … How to acquire things is a duty? It's strange. "

His family left Queens, New York, at the age of seven to settle in Spring Valley, an immigrant community 22 kilometers north of Manhattan. "It only takes one person to get sick and your house is seized," he says, recalling what his family had gone through. "Now you are being evicted … We had a period when we were comfortable – seeing this change fairly quickly is one of the reasons I am so suspicious."

The time he spent in retail – a job he could not give up until a few years ago – also helped shape his thinking. He now teaches at Syracuse University where he earned his MA in Creative Writing. He has just bought his first television. his first laptop was bought for him by his older sister, well after entering college and after being overwhelmed by "all these kids in each clbad with their MacBook.

"I did not understand what a writer was, but I think I chose that job because I became very cynical about things that can be removed and things I could not control myself. -even. And write – I can do it 100% on my own. I was incredibly obsessed.

Did the Trump Presidency give a creative impetus to him and his peers? "I wrote this book before thinking that it was even possible for someone like Donald Trump to become president," he says emphatically. "It's a symptom, but you can not ignore it anymore. He says and does terrible things. He is an unrepentant misogynist in an obvious way that is traceable, traceable and recorded. He's not interested in pretending to be a good person by the usual standard … What's scary, in a sense, is that even if it's been destroyed [in the 2020 presidential elections]This does not mean that the problem is gone. "

It is unlikely that the truths of Adjei-Brenyah's stories will reach the audiences most in need, but it is clear that neither artists nor policymakers [should be] addressing the worst people, who do not even consider Black people as human beings in the same light as them.

"I do not want [this book] preach only to the choir and in fact, I know I am not. As in the literary world, the choir is not even what I think, it's because you go into any literary piece and you get, "Oh wow, we worry so much. It's racism, and that's it and the other. " He smiles to apologize and looks at the busy open-plan office space behind the glbad wall of his publisher's office. "But, like, this room is as white as anything else."

Adjei-Brenyah was at the university at SUNY Albany when Trayvon Martin was murdered. It was a crucial moment for him. he and a friend created pamphlets and stayed up until 3 am by distributing them on campus. "We were pious … We corrected racism, you know! We felt obliged to galvanize ourselves, we woke up hoping to see the new world order that we had established. Nothing has happened. "We saw the janitor sweep away all the brochures. We had hardly thrown waste. "He's laughing.

"I remember not having liked it … but it was good for me. Rather than saying, "It's me and my wisdom and that's how you do it and live your life," what I've learned is to ask questions. It's at this point that it's starting to sound corny … in that I'm trying to ask important questions. He does not want to look great. "Because even asking questions creates a kind of truth. You just have to be ready to look closely and say something real. "

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