Incarceration

As might be expected from a novel devoted to a thorough critique of the prison-industrial complex in the United States, the trials and frameworks of incarceration are central themes throughout Chain-Gang All-Stars. Adjei-Brenyah explores in excruciating detail the strategies used by carceral systems to systematically dehumanize incarcerated people, and spends much of the novel focusing on dystopian analogs for systems that are currently or historically in place. But he also examines the methods of survival deployed by individuals forced to suffer through that dehumanizing system.

The mechanisms and technologies created and perpetuated by the prison-industrial complex in the United States are central the the plot of the novel, and the Links often find themselves dealing with forced obeisance to the technological powers that control them. The futuristic handcuffs they wear, Arc bands, are capable of controlling not only their movement but also their speech and even...