Chain-Gang All-Stars Quotes

“Remember that just because something is, doesn’t mean it can’t change, and just because you haven’t seen something before, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“I thought about how the world can be anything and how said it is that it's this.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“She forced love into this loveless space, made it the subject of her life. She showed them that she, the Hurricane, was capable of great love, and that if they’d look they’d see they were too. And maybe someday they would understand what they’d enabled, what they’d created.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Mari looked at the woman and took a breath. “I’m an abolitionist, which means I’m interested in investing in communities to address problems rather than carceral answers that don’t serve communities at all. Murderers and rapists do great harm,” Mari said, “but the carceral institutions in this country do little to mitigate that harm. In fact, they do more harm to individuals and communities. The carceral state depends on a dichotomy between innocent and guilty, or good and bad, so that they can then define harm on their terms, in the name of justice, and administer it on a massive scale to support a capitalistic, violent, and inherently inequitable system.” And though this was what she said, and had said so many times, a part of her even then understood what this reporter was getting at. There were some people who she did not think should be released. Her father had been one of them.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“I’m saying that the death penalty has always been an abomination, even before the CAPE program. Prison as it exists is an abomination. Right now, the fact is, people are doing the exact kinds of harm you’re describing. Prisons haven’t deterred the harm they’re meant to deter. They’re a failed experiment.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“A home is an origin story. A home is a thing to carry. A home is a wild field of energy that floods floods floods. Call me. Call me home.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Does disappearing one person from the earth clean it some? I seen men I knew were a danger to the world and they too deserve better than this. A shame for me to hope for better, but I know it’s better that can be done. Ain’t no magic potions for these bleeding human hearts. Ain’t no building full of hurt gonna save the masses.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“She tried to breathe in the feeling of doing something good and right and difficult that no one could understand. She didn't wonder if she was right; she wondered why it was her destiny to do so many good, hard things.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Some truly didn’t think about the fact that men and women were being murdered every day by the same government their children pledged allegiance to at school.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Pain was in the body, but pain also seeped into the walls. Pain started in the body, but it latched to a soul and tried to take it. Pain could disappear people;”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“The GameMasters watched. They were the board of directors but also, they were more; they were dealmakers and wardens and politicians and owners, and they lived in a rarefied version of the world, a space above, for them alone. They sat and drank champagne to their philanthropic hearts' content. They watched a game they'd won already, many times over.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“I've had my eyes taken from me twenty-three hours a day. The one hour I'm out of the hole is the worst of them all. I spend the fifty-nine minutes afraid to go back in.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“And when she walked off the set with tears in her eyes, she was smiling, because when it came down to it, she was exactly who she’d hoped she’d be.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“He clearly felt awe and respect for these two women but also was not bothered by the fact that they lived a razor’s edge from death. He knew it likely helped that they were Black women; market research found that the public generally cared less for their survival. In the center of the complicated nexus of adored and hated, desired but also easy to watch being destroyed, it had to be a Black woman.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“And maybe someday they would understand what they’d enabled, what they’d created.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“What she had learned was that life, any life, was death and rebirth, death and rebirth. Everything always changed.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Skip Notes *1 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare Signed at Geneva June 17, 1925 Entered into force February 8, 1928 Ratification advised by the U.S. Senate December 16, 1974 Ratified by U.S. President January 22, 1975 U.S. ratification deposited with the Government of France April 10, 1975 Proclaimed by U.S. President April 29, 1975 The Undersigned Plenipotentiaries, in the name of their respective Governments: Whereas the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world; and Whereas the prohibition of such use has been declared in Treaties to which the majority of Powers of the World are Parties; and To the end that this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part of International Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations. Tear gas has been deemed a “riot control agent,” which exempts it from chemical weapons law. As such, it is regularly used by police on citizens in city streets, while still being prohibited from war zones.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“They were all humans, and yet they had completely different ideas about what humanity meant.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“The joke was everything. That they’d been thrown into evil and discovered it was a land they could master.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“This was the time I thought there was nothing to lose. There is always, always a bottom you can't imagine. I didn't know that then.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“She had touched a woman who had not only known her father but who had killed with him. All she remembered of the man they called Sunset Harkless was that he smelled like dust and cinnamon. That and that he’d sometimes throw her high up in the air before catching her when she was too young to tie her own shoes. Her father, a man she hardly knew, had committed murder. He had committed sexual assault. She was ashamed to have come from him. And the hard truth was, despite the work she did, the work she believed in, she had not been sure she wanted to see her father free in the world. She had not wanted to have him appear in her life. She had not wanted the world to know she was his daughter. And then he’d died and all she’d had left was dust and cinnamon and the feeling of flying, then falling.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Suck my dick, America.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“I mean that all those issues that you’re talking about are symptoms of our current system. Rampant poverty, a lack of resources for people suffering from addiction and mental health issues—those are difficult problems, but ones that can be addressed. But they aren’t. Because criminalization dehumanizes individuals and implicates them rather than a society that abandons them in times of need.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“...despite how hard it was, she wasn't afraid with love. She knew how to wield it, how to grow it, and how to receive it.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Retribution of the same kind promises that he was not wrong but rather that he was small.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“the soldier-police were predictably increasing their presence around all Chain-Gang All-Stars events and many politicians had already appeared before holostreams to implore nonviolence. An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror. It would have been funny if there weren’t so much blood everywhere.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Thurwar drank in the moment. The little moments of Staxxx. The way she carried herself. When she was feeling good, there was no one like her. When she was feeling bad, she was just as special. A person so unchained despite it all. Staxxx reminded anyone lucky enough to see her that there were parts of a human that could never be chained.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“She hated what she was, but she loved what she could do.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“There's blood on every piece of here.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars