Friday Black: Stories

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Friday Black is the most exciting debut of short fiction I’ve read since Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, and I would argue this is the most important work of fiction of the past year. If you’re troubled by the rise of white nationalism and right-wing terrorism, this book will in turns console, enrage and rally you.

I ground my teeth reading these stories, horrified at the injustices revealed within, particularly two inspired by George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012 but was acquitted of second-degree murder charges.

However, to say that injustices are revealed is not exactly the right term, as Adjei-Brenyah doesn’t show us anything we don’t already know. These are not quite reflections of reality either, but rather refractions, a spoon bending in a glass of water.

I would include the lead story, “The Finkelstein 5,” in my all-time top 40 short stories. In this tale, a black man, Emmanuel, navigates each moment conscious of his “Blackness.” Talking on the phone, he can dial down his “Blackness” to a 1.5 out of 10, but in person the lowest he can go is a 4.0.

At the mall, he maintains a “smooth 5.0.” When a cashier forgets to give him a receipt for his purchase, he asks her for it, knowing that the store’s security guard will ask for proof of purchase on his way out.

The degenerative effect of this constant self-monitoring and the frustration it causes screams from the opening paragraph:

“Fela, the headless girl, walked toward Emmanuel. Her neck jagged with red savagery. She was silent, but he could feel her waiting for him to do something, anything.”

In the story, a George Zimmerman-inspired character, named George, has beheaded five black children with a chainsaw outside a public library. He was acquitted because he believed he was in danger, and as his attorney argues, in America, “if you believe something, anything, then that’s all that counts.”

While en route to a job interview, Emmanuel bumps into a friend who is part of a vigilante group seeking retribution. They engage in “Naming”—attacking random white people while chanting the name of one of the murdered children. Emmanuel joins the group in the park, and, armed with a baseball bat, they find a target. As he chants the name “Fela St. John,” he allows his “Blackness” to rise to a 10.0.

What follows is an unexpected, but inevitable conclusion.

It’s no surprise that Adjei-Brenyah studied under George Saunders at Syracuse, as both men use near-future dystopias to reveal the absurdities of quotidian life that we accept as normal. From retail shops to classrooms to theme parks, Adjei-Brenyah explores the ways in which the totalitarian infects our daily lives, not with subtlety, but hyperbole.

It’s a reminder that dystopias are not imposed upon humanity—humans create them by elevating our worst tendencies (racism, vanity, consumerism, nationalism, etc.) into virtues. In fact, the oppressive environments and social customs in Adjei-Brenyah’s world are so believable that I worry it may be dismissive to refer to them as dystopias when they could well be different POVs of current reality.

The tale with the sharpest teeth is “Zimmer Land,” which concerns the inner turmoil of a black actor, Zay, working in a theme park where visitors can embrace their prejudices. His role is to walk along the sidewalk of a gated community and be confronted by the “homeowners.”

He wears a special protection suit equipped with blood packets for when he is inevitably shot in the name of law and order.

In one of the most heartbreaking passages, we see how this plays out. A patron runs from their house to confront him, asking him what he’s doing here. Zay says he lives there and asks what the patron is doing there. It’s a cyclical conversation that serves as pretense for the patron to shoot Zay in the street.

These two men asked each other the same question, and each gave the same answer. But clearly, “I live here” is only an acceptable answer for one of them.

Zay struggles with the ethics of his job, particularly when the park’s owner, Heland Zimmer, begins to allow entry to children.

Friday Black is a collection of funny, depressing, impactful stories of people trapped in impossible situations. It’s a biting look at 21st century America, and the arrival of a powerful new voice in fiction.