Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Friday Black
Friday Black
Friday Black
Audiobook7 hours

Friday Black

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America. From the start of this extraordinary debut, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's writing will grab you, haunt you, enrage and invigorate you. By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day in this country. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In "The Finkelstein Five," Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unforgettable reckoning of the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In "Zimmer Land," we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And "Friday Black" and "How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King" show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all. Entirely fresh in its style and perspective, and sure to appeal to fans of Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, and George Saunders, Friday Black confronts readers with a complicated, insistent, wrenching chorus of emotions, the final note of which, remarkably, is hope.

Editor's Note

Lauded debut…

A searing debut short story collection that delivers on both style and substance. It skillfully weaves together elements of satire and magical realism with today’s most pressing, politically-charged issues to create otherworldly tales that are haunting and achingly relevant. Forbes named author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah as one of the top 30 “young, creative and bold minds” of 2020.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 23, 2018
ISBN9781980002994
Author

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honorees, is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.  

Related to Friday Black

Related audiobooks

African American Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Friday Black

Rating: 4.0546874421875 out of 5 stars
4/5

256 ratings26 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This story collection was so weird and so amazing. And funny! OhEmGee it was funny. I need to have a physical copy. As I listened there were parts that I would have highlighted had I been reading a physical copy. I appreciate the narrators. They did an excellent job.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Political, unwavering, weird, definitely a thumbs up from me. Yay.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Oh man. This is a tough read, very black mirror. A reflection of all the terrible parts of society, specifically relating to race, magnified to near absurdity. But most of these stories really don't feel like that much of a stretch from our own reality, showing just how far we've let fear and hate seep into our culture. Very well written and hard to put down despite really not wanting to know what horrors are on the next page.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Raw and modern, with future-state world's that are captivating and terrifyingly possible.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully strange and poignant collection of short stories. Brilliant in style & narrative form
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What did I just listened to …some stories are powerful ,the first two especially ,others are plain weird like something you would come up with after a nightmare .
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Full disclosure to start this review: I've decided to DNF after reading about 35% of the book, just having finished the fourth story in the collection, "Lark Street", which I personally read as being blatantly anti-abortion, whether or not that is the message intended. If I'd absolutely loved the stories leading up to it, I might have stuck with the collection as a whole, but since that wasn't the case and I was able to chat about what was coming with a few other folks, I decided to move on.I'll get back to "Lark Street" in a minute, but I first want to mention that I know a number of folks who've read the collection, and most agree that the first story--"The Finkelstein 5"--is by far the strongest. Of the ones I read, it was certainly the strongest, and I think it succeeded in so many ways. The one failing was potentially in gender representation, as the book has an undeniably male focus/eye, which gets problematic in later stories, and which I've heard becomes even more of an issue in the second half of the book, where the book simply lacks positive portrayals of characters who aren't men (this is what I've heard vs read for myself, but it did influence my decision to DNF at this point since it seems like I've already read the best and the worst of the book, with folks feeling much more so-so about the rest of the collection). Conceptually and structurally, though, the opener of the collection is smart and powerful, as well as being well-written (even though I'd say the prose in what I read overall feels too MFA-styled for my taste).The next story in the collection, "Things My Mother Said", was sort of a non-entity for me. As in, I felt like I'd read similar enough before that it didn't strike me in any fashion, but it was short enough that that didn't particularly bother me after the first story's strength. The next story, "The Era", was far stronger...but it also dragged on and on, and this was also the point where I started to get uncomfortable with gender presentation, wondering if the author would ever write a positive woman or girl into the mix of the story in a way that made them feel real or more than just a stereotype. I read the story, and was glad to have read it...but it certainly didn't blow me away. I think the concept was capable of that power, but the story was just too long to deliver the impact that the concept might have been capable of, and some of the characterization issues brought it down further. It also felt fairly heavy-handed, though I took that to be the author's style.And that's when I got to "Lark Street."Here's the thing. Authorial intention only matters so much. I just finished reading another book where the author started out his Afterword by saying that he hated explaining his stories because his intentions didn't particularly matter--what mattered was what readers took from the story, and if he had to explain them, he'd already failed on some level. Some readers may see this story as satire, but I would argue that if it is satire, it is simply badly done and failed in its execution. I say this because I and many others in my book club did not read it as satire, and could find no good-faith argument for how someone would see it as anything but anti-abortion. And in this climate, in 2022 in the U.S., where I (and many others) am living in a state where my right to get an abortion has been curtailed, if not all but eliminated, it is extremely difficult to bend over backwards to try to read a story like this as anything but anti-abortion. I don't owe the author that time, or the mental health involved, or an acknowledgement that he might not have meant it that way (even though that's exactly what I'm saying here). The point is, it doesn't really matter if he 'meant it that way' once the story is in print and has the potential to do harm.Why do I say it has the potential to do harm? CWs aside, the story rehashes and essentially celebrates all of the anti-abortion arguments which are posted upon billboards, posters, and in videos whenever someone aims to make an anti-abortion argument. It could quite literally be offered to a reader by a conservative anti-abortion activist who would say, "Here. Read this. It'll help you see why abortion is wrong. Why it only leads to sadness and regret." The fact that the story could be used in that manner, and that passages could be taken out of context to argue against a woman's right to have an abortion for any reason, means that it's very difficult for me to see beyond the messaging which seems so incredibly blatant. And, again, I don't owe the author or anyone else that time, because to me this is a harmful story, particularly in the political climate we're in now. Ten-fifteen years ago, it might have been edgy and a conversation-starter and something I could respect from a male writer...but to be honest, in a collection that's just come out a few years ago and would have been finalized far more recently than ten years ago, I can't in good conscience understand the reasoning behind including the story unless the author either doesn't care about a woman's right to choose OR is truly anti-abortion. And in either case, especially given the lack of positive female representation in the book, I see no need to continue reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The first story in this collection -- "The Finkelstein 5," which was clearly inspired by the murder of Trayvon Martin and a hundred similar acts of violence -- absolutely devastated me. It was unbelievably powerful, and I was utterly unprepared for it. I think what made it so effective was the fact that, on the one hand, it felt deeply, darkly satirical and yet, on the other, it barely seemed exaggerated at all. It was like a giant punch in the gut, and after finishing it, I had to put the book down for a while to recover.Part of me thinks that it's almost a shame that that was the first story in the collection, as it overshadows most of what comes after it, even though what comes after it is still very good. There's a fascinating and often disturbing combination, here, of the bizarre and the mundane, with the frequent appearance of a streak of violence that seems equally at home in both worlds. The writing is terrific, too: never showy, but always absorbing and effective.And then we come to the final story, "Through the Flash," about a town living through the same day over and over, and the collection ends damn near as strong as it began. This one is complex, horrific, and affecting in a way that sneaks up on you from several different directions. As I turned the final page and shut the book, I found myself murmuring "wow" out loud. Astonishing stuff.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting anthology of stories. Some fascinating albeit macabre, some not quite my cuppa. My favourites were the dystopian tales. Makesnyiu think about the nature of people.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    a stunning debut, reminded me of when I first read Harlan Ellison. That powerful.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Short stories collections are not really my thing because they're often a mixed bag. It's like panning for gold. Friday Black is an exception in that nearly every one of the 12 stories is exceptional. Adjei-Brenyah throws down the gauntlet with the opening story "The Finkelstein 5." When the second story was sweet but forgettable, I let my guard down and completely unprepared for almost every subsequent story to slay that hard. Highlights: "The Era", "Lark Street", "Zimmer Land", and "Light Splitter". I happened to read this right around Thanksgiving, which made the Black Friday-related stories all the more impactful. I'm greatly looking forward to what he comes up with next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Best taken in small doses, these American nightmares leave you trashing in a sweat, and the pain and hope, small that it is, of them are equally terrible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An uneven collection, overly hyped. Where it is good, it is very very good (Things My Mother Said; Zimmer Land; In Retail). But not every story is of this quality. What shines through for me is the humanism of the author's perspective, striving to see the positive, seeking change where no change seems possible. I'd recommend reading this certainly, but i look forward even more to see what Adjei-Brenyah produces in the future, works that sit longer and ferment into a more potent brew.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    These twelve dystopian stories of rage and violence in possibly present and assuredly future-time America center around well-deserved vengeance against the prevailing violent white culture. Two of the most heartfelt take place at the Prominent Mall, where shoppers kill clerks and each other for SleekPack PoleFace SuperShell coats. In others, twin fetuses haunt the couple who aborted them, a nuclear disaster replays endlessly in a Groundhog Day-type loop, and a performer at a Westworld-type amusement park revolts when the facility opens to children. Each story is based on a horrible American fantasy or reality we know - the author just makes them that much worse and transparent with his passionate yet controlled writing. In each situation, the narrator tries to inject kindness and, thwarted, saves him or herself and whomever else they can. As terrible as each circumstance is, the interior thoughts and dialogue motivates the reader to see what can be salvaged and if there is any grace to be found.Quote: "I'd become a devotee to a religion of my own creation. Its most integral ritual was maintaining a precise calm especially when angry, when hurt, when terrified."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Friday Black received a lot of attention and appeared on several "best books of 2018" lists. So as someone who likes short stories and is a sucker for a good book list, I picked up a copy. It really is as good as the hype makes it out to be. The first story, The Finkelstein 5, hits with all the force of a chain saw swung through the air and then immediately follows with an entirely different, but also powerful story called Things My Mother Said.Many of the stories are set in versions of a dystopian future America and concern events like a Black Friday sale gone violent, a man who works for a company that provides people to engage in live action role-play involving seeing a strange black guy in your neighborhood and a bleak, apocalyptic tale of people having to return to a specific time and place over and over again.I was impressed with this collection and I look forward to reading more by Adjei-Brenyah.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Friday Black is an impressive début collection of short stories set in a dystopian version of contemporary America, which touches on race, what it means to be an African American man in this country, and the consumer driven culture we live in. The first story, 'The Finkelstein 5', is narrated by a young man who can adjust his blackness level to fit his dress, attitude and emotional state, who is outraged by the verdict of a trial involving five young black kids and a white man and struggles to balance his rage with his responsibilities. In 'Lark Street', a young man who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant is forced to face the consequences of their decision to abort the pregnancy, in a wholly unexpected manner. 'Zimmer Land' is narrated by another young man who works in a virtual reality amusement park, where he portrays a black man who walks in an unfamiliar neighborhood and is confronted by an offended and usually armed resident who challenges his right to be there. The title story is a brilliant and hilarious parody set in the early morning hours on Black Friday in a suburban shopping mall, as store employees face a crazed mob who will bite, maim and even kill their competitors and the staff for a PoleFace winter jacket or other item that will ensure the continued love of a spouse or child on Christmas Day.The best of the short stories in Friday Black are amongst the best and most unique ones I've ever read, as Adjei-Brenyah has his pulse firmly on the contradictions and absurdities of American society. The remaining stories are good ones, but pale in comparison to the best of them. Friday Black is a superb and highly entertaining book, which is deserving of the high praise and recognition it has received.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short stories of the if-this-goes-on variety. The first involves a young black man who flirts with joining a new movement, the Namers, who dress in formal outfits while committing violence against whites and chanting the names of black children who’d been murdered with impunity. Others involve working retail in a world in which Black Friday creates zombie-like behavior and routinely leaves multiple people dead per store. The last story, and the one I liked best, featured a protagonist who’d been trapped in a time loop right before nuclear devastation; in possibly millions of loops, she’d turned herself into a monster and then tried for redemption, with unclear results
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent short story collection. The influence of George Saunders is there but does not overpower the author's own voice. Very dark in a way appropriate for our times.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tough and tender and oddly fun to read. In this gruesome, fantastical collection characters are frequently decapitated, crushed, driven beyond reason by pain and fear, yet I didn’t want to turn away. It’s all too gorgeously absurd, even laughable at times; yet it isn’t the humor nor even the wildly inventive bad worlds that make Friday Black unputdownable. It’s the very specific sadness that each story evokes.

    “Through the Flash” is like every end of the world story that you ever read—except for the reminder that the world never really ends in human experience, it just goes on feeling that way day after day after day. “Lightspitter” is, I think, the only believable fiction I’ve read that tries to get into the head of an American shooter, not to mention angels and demons. It gets right into the everydayness of ordinary people’s lives—no, ordinary people’s souls, which outlast our lives—up until the moments that we are either killed or revealed to ourselves as killers. “In Retail” is set in the “real” world—one without near-future water wars, killer characters, or walk-ons by the Twelve-tongued God, for instance—perhaps only because the central element, a jumper at a suburban mall, so effectively merges the real and metaphorical violence of our world.

    Nana knows the American suburbs, particularly the mall, and the violence done there. These stories literally meet me where I live.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Adeji-Brenyah offers a new perspective on Twilight Zone-like speculative fiction. The first and last stories are quite amazing. "The Finkelstein 5" captures the rage of the Black Lives Matter movement while twisting it in horrifying ways. "Through the Flash" is a ghoulish but compelling take on Groundhog Day.The stories between are pretty good also with differing levels of success. "Zimmer Land" represents a terrifyingly possibility while reflecting a more terrifying reality. But the retail hell stories, with recurring characters and setting, fell flat for me.This is very exciting work, and I look forward to seeing more from the author in the future.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A collection of powerful, interesting collection of short stories from the African American experience. It was an excellent read. As with most story collections, they weren't all tremendous, but there are enough that are that make this worth your time. Seemingly all told in the same "world", some told in the same Sporting Goods/Walmart analog clothing store where Black Friday becomes Night of the Living Customer (Friday Black). The Finkelstein 5 and Zimmer Land are both takes on the "stand your ground" and Black Lives Matter. The former is what happens when a white man brutally kills some innocent young African Americans and how the community seeks to get vengeance. The latter shows one way to channel one's fears and tensions into a Westworld like simulations, essentially to cut down on crime and violence. Some of the stories had a Twilight Zone feel, like the very profound Lake Street, to post apocalyptic science fiction like After the Flash which crosses nuclear annihilation with a time bubble. A debut collection, but one worth your time.8/10 S: 1/29/19 - 2/5/19 (8 Days)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This debut collection was by an author who was a student of George Saunders. The influence is obvious. These 12 stories are very creative and show Adjei-Brenyah's obvious talent. Almost all of the protagonists were young black men and it deals with racism and consumerism through the use of science fiction and very bitter satire. Some of the stories were too obscure for me but most were on a level that would have warranted a 5 star rating for an entire book. The author's stories about retail were very effective and really showed a lot of awareness as to the impact that materialism has in our lives. The book was around 200 pages and was a worthwhile investment of time on my part. Some of the stories may not work for everyone but there were enough gems to recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short story collections are always a mixed bag. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut collection Friday Black is no exception. Some of these stories are entirely passable; however, the very best stories make up for these flat ones. They are brutally honest and visceral. They primarily tackle issues of racism and consumerism (hence the title), but do so while mixing the horror of Shirley Jackson with equal parts science fiction and cutting-edge contemporary fiction. The pieces that shine in this collection do so with such vibrance and originality that one cannot easily deny Adjei-Brenyah's future as an accomplished writer.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A debut collection of short stories, this was very impressive writing. Adjei-Brenyah's stories were evocative, provocative, disturbing, and soulful. The stories are varied, including a post-apocalyptic tale, a tale of the foulness of salespeople and customers on Black Friday Sales day, and a tale of the degree of effort required to manage the suppressed rage accruing from being the victim of racism, and more. There is violence, and it is graphic, yet anything but gratuitous. I look forward to his future works of literature.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think I'm just not made to enjoy collections of short stories. I think its their unevenness that makes me dislike them; nearly every collection I've read has some good stories in it, but you really have to dig for those, because they're surrounded by stories that are far less appealing to me.I didn't have to dig to find the gem in this collection; it was right at the beginning. "The Finkelstein Five" was, quite frankly, amazing. The killing of the children was quite over the top - the white defendant used a chainsaw against CHILDREN and was, miraculously, acquitted. I don't put much faith in our justice system, but I hope that our society isn't THAT far gone? I really don't know, though. I mean...look at the news. Maybe the author isn't so far off. It had a sense of urgency and felt contemporary. This, I thought to myself, is the start of an amazing collection of short stories. Maybe I was wrong - maybe I WAS made to enjoy short stories, and I just hadn't found the correct collection until now.I was let down, however, with the rest of the stories. The first story in the collection far surpassed the remainder, and I was left wondering how this book had received so much hype and praise. Give me more stories like "The Finkelstein Five" and I'll most gladly read them. Unfortunately, there wasn't another one on its level here.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In troubled times there's always the directive for creative types—writers, artists, filmmakers, poets—to turn their anger, fear, frustration into meaningful statements. And yeah, easier said than done—particularly, done well. But Friday Black is very much that sort of work for these times, and a terrific, unconventional read. Adjei-Brenyah's stories are smart, sharp, often harrowing; about anger, race and racism, consumerism, guilt, culpability, violence and its seductions, and the fierce pull of human decency against all of the dark matter. His voice and style are highly original—nothing here is in any way predictable. And while no catharsis is handed to the reader, there's still a sense of release to reading them, which maybe lies in his intelligent handling of all that complexity. Plus it's just good—rough around the edges in a few places, but a terrific debut, and highly recommended.Standout stories are "The Finkelstein 5," "Zimmer Land," "Light Spitter," and "Through the Flash," none of them for the faint of heart (but who can afford to be faint of heart these days anyway?). And "The Hospital Where" is a wonderful writer's origin story.