Link Life: A Study in Humanity
By: Rae
The title itself should be telling that this story goes deeper. After sitting with this for a little I decided to pen some thoughts on the page.
A chain gang—a group of prisoners that are often Black American working as a punishment. These prisoners were linked together like the chains they wore and prevented anyone from escaping. Much like in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars, the Links of the Chain are tied together. Every action and reaction resulting in consequences for the whole.
“I love you” are the last words of Hamara “Hurricane” Staxx in every battle. She is a cyclone of a woman that represents so many of those that show their light and their darkness to the world. She is an enforcer, a woman not afraid to collect blood points to survive. She shows love while covered in blood and forced into silence. She reminds me of some women I have seen in Corporate America. They take care of theirs and damn anyone else and when faced with an adversary, they bare their teeth and claws and leave their opponents in bloody clumps. Yet they lock away pieces of themselves and evoke a double consciousness to separate their soul from the personality that keeps them fed and comfortable. I draw this comparison not minimize the action of the criminal, the murderer Hamara Stacker, but instead to magnify her humanity. We do what is necessary to survive and sometimes that is developing our own sense of empathy or lack thereof.
I can’t say that Hamara is a real person, but the tangible shape of her spirit and character is a bit familiar to me. She is a multiverse version of a friend that made different decisions in different circumstances. Her lover, Loretta Thurwar, another character I am so familiar with in life. The reformed hot-headed, taciturn introvert that carries a confidence only eclipsed by her concealed emotions. Nana Kwame Adejei-Brenyah crafts these characters with care in Chain-Gang All-Stars. Each point of view is a new piece of the puzzle, a new understanding of their identity and the society that imprisons them. Thurwar is the Blood Mother but does not relish in the violence, at least…not anymore. She is a warrior yet prisoner that has been used in the capitalistic machine that is the CAPE Program. At some point in the book, Staxx and Thurwar are described as “Warriors on a ride until they are free”. That freedom is just as synonymous with death as it is release into the world that cheers for their death at every turn.
We often think of the system as a whole without peering into the cogs and wiring, without taking a critical look at the characters on the stage. The stage that is, just that, a fabrication beyond their control. It is the media or the oligarchy that displays them and all of their sins before us. Their suffering, a salve to the unhappiness of the masses. Their humanity stripped to that of gladiator. It’s that or to truly admit that their sins were not "wrong but that [they are] small”. What does it say that we villainize murder but profit from it in so many ways?
Then there are the other pieces on the board, like Patty. Patty, whose dreams of bringing comfort to the suffering, ends up being an unwilling Oppenheimer with the inadvertent creation of the Influencer stick and possibly the shock shackles. Patty, a Caribbean doctor, that watched her father die slowly and painfully. Her story, like so many others in history, is that of a woman who had her invention stolen and used in malicious ways. She reminds me of Quellist Falconer in Altered Carbon, another brilliant, Black woman that ended up seeking to destroy her own creation. She was someone only seeking to do good, and yet she is probably the one with the most blood on her hands. One could argue that without her, there would be no Loretta Thurwar. Because as Simon J. Craft says, “Once influenced, always influenced”.
But there are two scenes that will forever be emblazoned upon my mind. The first a scene of normalcy where the Links do their community service in a Hub City and are met with the smiling faces of adoring crowds filled with people cheering for Staxx in her hometown. They sign merchandise, talk with children and are treated like athletes doing volunteer community service. It’s also then where we see their humanity on display for all and when all hell breaks, lose their supporters and the people that truly care about them, protect them.
The second scene is ironically the last. That flavor of bitterness, rage and overwhelming grief is hard to forget. I was on the edge of my seat hoping, praying, that there was a way out of this. That they would decide to die together or that by some miracle, the crowd would save them. But I knew that wouldn’t happen. I knew only one would make it out alive and that it would be Thurwar in the end. Hamara felt her only purpose in life was to hurt the ones she loved, especially because killing was all she thought of. While Loretta had become a genuine leader, so much so that many were willing to live and die for her. Both couldn’t die, it would have dishonored the lives that came before them.
I wanted justice so bad, I wanted them to live happily ever after so bad but that was the point, wasn’t it? No one ever talks about the strongest link, the one that holds on, no matter what.
The strongest Link in a Chain is alone but remains unbroken.
