Alanna's Book Journey

Chain-Gang All-stars is a dystopia rooted in a world that feels like our own, because in many ways, it is. The violence of the world of Chain-Gang All stars is violence that currently exists: things like prison fight clubs, solitary confinement, and torture are currently an integral part of the prison industrial complex and the violence of state capitalism. In Chain Gang All Stars, this connection to our current reality is further emphasized by the way that footnotes are used to interject with real-world examples and statistics regarding the harms being described. 

Despite the horrors that this book details, it is deeply rooted in care, in creating the world we want through our choices and actions, even in the worst circumstances. Where Chain-Gang All-Stars really rises above other narratives that touch on revolution (i.e. the Hunger Games) is that the book never lets us forget that every single person is a human being, fully deserving of care. Even prisoners who have committed what we might consider unforgivable acts are presented as full-characters, with backstories, motivations and moving character arcs. I contrast this with the mindless killers in Districts 1 and 2 of the Hunger Games, flat characters that are never treated as fully human. Unlike Hunger Games, there is no District 1 here, whose people we can kill without considering their humanity. In the same way, there is no single bad-guy to root against (no President Snow) no single man we can topple to end the horrors, because the horrors, while perpetrated by individuals are systemic, and that system will continue to produce horrors until it is dismantled.

Chain-Gang All-Stars unrelentingly exposes us to all the ways that the systems we live under make us all complicit in the violence that it perpetuates to maintain control. From the point of view chapters by fans of Chain-Gang All-Stars, to the backstory about the creation the technology used to torture imprisoned people, to the way that imprisoned people “consent” to participating in the games, it never shies away from the fact that these systems are systems that we create together, they cannot operate without our participation. And the book also demonstrates the opposite, what happens when we abandon our privilege and use our power to put sand in the gears of the killing machine, the ripples it creates.

This book also has a lot to say about the role of modern corporations and advertising, mainstream sports culture (and the opulent exceptionalism, harm, and obfuscation of wider community harm), reality TV (and Foucault’s ideas about the Panopticon and the modern surveillance state). It is a layered text that I’ll likely keep thinking about for a long time, and that is not even considering the powerful parallelism between the books opening and it’s ending and the questions it asks us about how we can do good in a violent system.

This narrative hit close to home. My father was imprisoned. I visited him in prison several times. I am one of the justice involved people that the novel talks about, that became interested in abolition, because it is much harder to justify or ignore these systems when you have seen them up close. I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book, and especially the audiobook, because the narration and the singing (so much powerful and beautiful singing) heighten the already stellar writing.

Chain-Gang All-stars is a dystopia rooted in a world that feels like our own, because in many ways, it is. The violence of the world of Chain-Gang All stars is violence that currently exists: things like prison fight clubs, solitary confinement, and torture are currently an integral part of the prison industrial complex and the violence of state capitalism. In Chain Gang All Stars, this connection to our current reality is further emphasized by the way that footnotes are used to interject with real-world examples and statistics regarding the harms being described. 

Despite the horrors that this book details, it is deeply rooted in care, in creating the world we want through our choices and actions, even in the worst circumstances. Where Chain-Gang All-Stars really rises above other narratives that touch on revolution (i.e. the Hunger Games) is that the book never lets us forget that every single person is a human being, fully deserving of care. Even prisoners who have committed what we might consider unforgivable acts are presented as full-characters, with backstories, motivations and moving character arcs. I contrast this with the mindless killers in Districts 1 and 2 of the Hunger Games, flat characters that are never treated as fully human. Unlike Hunger Games, there is no District 1 here, whose people we can kill without considering their humanity. In the same way, there is no single bad-guy to root against (no President Snow) no single man we can topple to end the horrors, because the horrors, while perpetrated by individuals are systemic, and that system will continue to produce horrors until it is dismantled.

Chain-Gang All-Stars unrelentingly exposes us to all the ways that the systems we live under make us all complicit in the violence that it perpetuates to maintain control. From the point of view chapters by fans of Chain-Gang All-Stars, to the backstory about the creation the technology used to torture imprisoned people, to the way that imprisoned people “consent” to participating in the games, it never shies away from the fact that these systems are systems that we create together, they cannot operate without our participation. And the book also demonstrates the opposite, what happens when we abandon our privilege and use our power to put sand in the gears of the killing machine, the ripples it creates.

This book also has a lot to say about the role of modern corporations and advertising, mainstream sports culture (and the opulent exceptionalism, harm, and obfuscation of wider community harm), reality TV (and Foucault’s ideas about the Panopticon and the modern surveillance state). It is a layered text that I’ll likely keep thinking about for a long time, and that is not even considering the powerful parallelism between the books opening and it’s ending and the questions it asks us about how we can do good in a violent system.

This narrative hit close to home. My father was imprisoned. I visited him in prison several times. I am one of the justice involved people that the novel talks about, that became interested in abolition, because it is much harder to justify or ignore these systems when you have seen them up close. I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book, and especially the audiobook, because the narration and the singing (so much powerful and beautiful singing) heighten the already stellar writing.

if you’re reading this, this is your sign to enter the “hunger games radicalised me as a child” to “chain-gang all-stars radicalised me as an adult” pipeline

A beautiful, heartwrenching, devastating web of stories. The author has expertly weaved over half a dozen (maybe even over a dozen, I lost count) characters' stories together through their shared connection to a fictional Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, which shares heartbreaking parallels to real life prisons in America.

I felt for every character in this book. I wanted to know every single character so much more than what I got to.

The themes were very blunt most of the time, the footnotes and the casually stated call to actions, and I liked that a lot.

Everything that this book tried to execute, I felt it did, with expert craftsmanship.

Where life is precious, life is precious

You will learn about the U. S. prison system. You will get angry. You will cry. You will feel love. You will ask questions. You will carry in the back of your mind the message of this book.

Please read it.

abolitionist advocacy in a devastating dystopian 'fiction' package. this is not a take-down-the-system dystopia, this is a how-do-you-live-with-yourself-when-you-have-to-exist-within-the-system-and-perpetrate-its-violences dystopia.

if you can't get your friends and family to pick up Angela Davis, try recommending this one. make sure to tell them that the footnotes are 90% non fiction.