"Friday Black"

“Friday Black”

Written by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Review written by Diana Iozzia

I am absolutely struggling to decide how I’d like to rate this book. My favorite stories from this collection are absolutely fantastic. I was enthralled by them. Entranced. Bewildered and horrified. This book is compared often to “Black Mirror”, and I can understand why. This collection of short stories centers around modern and past struggles that black Americans face often, mixed and twisted with false presents and futures, allowing a very fitting “Twilight Zone” meets “Get Out” collection. I feel that most of his stories are very uncomfortable, eerie, but also very captivating. We receive an objective perspective, in the sense where our writer asks us our own morals in each story, showing us that humans can truly be monsters. To further review this book, I feel like a separate explanation and my thoughts on each specific story would be the best method.

“The Finkelstein Five” is a devasting look into the mob mindset, of someone who sat on the fence but is pulled into the insidious side of justice. The themes of justice and honesty gone too far are prevalent through this short story collection. Our main character explains a trial in which a white man is acquitted after brutally killing five children with a chain saw, claiming self-defense. Black teens and adults begin killing white people, shouting the names of the five children. This present action is also wrapped around the dialogue of the trial. This was easily my favorite story of this collection. It was utterly jarring, but most of all; it was absolutely petrifying to watch a young man become entangled in the group of killers.

“Things My Mother Said” does not make any sense to me at all. I will have to look into further explanations of this.

“The Era” follows our main character in a society where parents choose certain genetic qualities for their future children. This allows certain people to be intelligent in ways that we deem but also renders people without these additions to be stupid and useless. We also see his character become more acquainted with a friend whose parents run a house they call “The Era” in which it is kept to the similar society style that we know today. It was also interesting in this story to learn a bit about the history between the life we know and when this story takes place. We learn about wars based on truth and honesty, which provide science fictional satire and dystopia but allow the reader to inquire further by not providing enough information. This was my second favorite story.

“Lark Street” personifies unborn children as animate fetuses as they slowly die outside women’s bodies. They interact with their mother and father as they decay quickly into dust. I can understand the political and satirical stances that provide backing for this story, but I personally just did not find it interesting or entertaining.

“The Hospital Where” is a strange story. Strange and bizarre. We read through the mind of a mentally unstable man who sacrifices his soul and tongue to a demon who creates cures for those who enter a specific hospital. I can imagine the intent: a man who would sacrifice everything to save his father; however, this comes off as confusing and completely passable.

“Zimmer Land” is brilliant. We are thrown into the mix of an employee of an amusement park themed around justice. There are interactive sections where people are able to engage in a George Zimmerman type scenario, in which people approach a black teen in a hoodie with a weapon. The patrons of the park choose to engage the black teen, an employee, in the manner they wish to execute justice, sometimes killing him. Sometimes, there are repeat patrons who pay just to simulate killing the teen. The impetus of the character arises when his bosses decide to create a new amusement in the park which asks young patrons to find a bomb in a school simulation. This was my second favorite story.

“Friday Black” is a gruesome tale of horror set in a society in which murder is excused in order to find the best sale during Black Friday. This provides no further detail about what society would excuse this. I personally did not enjoy this story, because it felt too unrealistic.

“The Lion and the Spider” confused me as well. I believe it is a sort of fairy tale or fable connected to the life of a man working in a hardware store. That’s all I understood.

“Light Spitter” features two characters, a boy and a girl. The boy kills her in a school shooting type scenario and then himself. They meet in an afterlife, in which she is an angel setting out to save another teen from completing a school shooting.

“How to Sell a Jacket as Told by IceKing” was really boring to me. Basically, imagine how to sell a jacket, told by an eager employee. This seems to take place in a similar society or the same one as “Friday Black” does.

“Through the Flash” is one of the more interesting but barely explained stories in this collection. We have our narrator who experiences the same day over and over again. However, she and others have noticed glitches or anomalies that are occurring that would lead us to believe that the day experience repeatedly is for a greater purpose, not just a scientific cataclysm.

In conclusion, I absolutely loved the stories I enjoyed. The stories I did not like were just not my type of writing. I feel that with short story collections, I understand if I do not enjoy every one of them, as long as I connect and love a few of them. I enjoyed the satire, the short spurts of dystopia, and the grim horrors. I felt though as this is branded as a collection that talks about black experiences in America, there was also a certain element of how those who want to fix those experiences could turn the tide in a different way. I felt a certain equilibrium between the political spectrum and the racism elements. This is a well-created and balanced book.

Thank you to Quercus Books for the advance reader’s copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.