“Swing through, not at” is a phrase that wouldn’t be out of place in a general sports advice column. But it’s also a repeated phrase in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel Chain-Gang All Stars with another layer of meaning than simple sport. When seasoned fighter Melancholia Bishop tells her fellow prisoner and opponent Loretta Thurwar, the novel’s protagonist, “I played their game. You don’t play it,” she clarifies that her advice to Thurwar is about anything but performing for observers, and Thurwar responds in kind: “I’m not dying here.” “Then swing through, not at,” Bishop responds, “And shave your fucking head. And make them love a version of you. That’s the important part, whatever you do. Love, then get out” (8). Bishop’s survival advice isn’t just about how to attack with maximum force or avoid getting grabbed by the hair, but to both “make them love a version of you” and to generally “love, then get out” of the traumatic sport. In this context, “swing through, not at” reads as swinging “through” the love of oneself and others to break free from a system of violence, not swinging “at” specific individuals as though they are at fault. Much like the rest of Adjei-Brenyah’s gory, dystopic science fiction, the struggle comes down to love.

Set in a near-future United States, Chain-Gang All Stars focuses on Thurwar and her partner Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker, prisoner “Links” in the same “Chain” team of gladiators in the show Chain-Gang All-Stars. As Thurwar nears completion of her term in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) program, though, her principled attempts to preserve other prisoners’ dignity runs afoul of corporate ownership, callous viewers, and even violence among her own. Deeper than the tangled history of Thurwar and Staxxx, the violence of incarceration stretches through prison designers, television presenters, contact sports fans, neuroscientists, and many more.

Adjei-Brenyah turns over every foundation of prisons to explore their issues in this dystopia. Occasional footnotes at first only explain the elements of CAPE and the backstories of killed prisoners, but as early as page 29, the footnotes bring in verifiable facts about the U.S. justice system such as the militarization of police via the 1033 program. Chapters balloon from defiant Thurwar and magnanimous Staxxx to points of view from partners of mega-fans, guards driving the prisoners, prisoners struggling to maintain sanity in solitary confinement, protesters against CAPE, victims of those hurt by the prisoners, and many more. The jumps between perspective and footnotes range across past and present tense and first, second, and third person, but with rare exceptions, Adjei-Brenyah stays in the moments of violence that mark incarceration. Rather than playing a simple redemption narrative, Chain-Gang All-Stars provides a polyphony twining around the harmonic mode of conflict, examining how cultures propagate violence while claiming to prevent it.

The sprawl of footnoting in particular occasionally drowns out Adjei-Brenyah’s vibrant characters: footnotes explaining prisoners’ backstories may have flowed better in the text, while the facts about the real criminal justice system might read as handholding. As someone with an abiding interest in narrative structure, however, I loved the parenthetical information and sources both for what they add to dystopian science fiction. Blending the fiction and the real helped me think through the role of fictional danger in our conception of reality, and I even learned a thing or two about prisoners in life-threatening rodeos exhibiting cruelty to humans and cows. Indeed, Adjei-Brenyah always grounds his narrative in the real history of incarceration with a spare few sci-fi tweaks (such as magnetic shackle implants and agony-inducing prods). But although our own troubles with incarceration can seem daunting, and Chain-Gang All-Stars depicts plenty of abuse, assault, and gore, the book also depicts everyday people pointing out that “where life is precious, life is precious” (326). If life is precious anywhere, respecting that preciousness may mean thinking generously, even with love for those who disrespect that preciousness. Adjei-Brenyah only calls for love, and to swing through the machinery that manufactures violence.