Telling It Like It Is
No subtlety, only brutal honesty in Chain-Gang All-Stars and Bury Your Gays
Always A Bigger Fish
It sometimes feels like the universe is actively out to correct me or prove me wrong. When I finished Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays (2024) last week for my monthly book club, I had the audacity to say in my Goodreads review that the book was “as on-the-nose as you can possibly get.”
After all, Tingle is not only exploring the ‘bury your gays’ trope from the perspective of a Hollywood writer, but also has that queer character’s life being threatened unless he bows down to corporate pressure and kills off his own star queer characters. It’s incredibly straightforward in a way that probably reflects reality for many creatives in the mainstream.
A few minutes after posting that review, I opened my next library book: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (see my previous post for a brief introduction to it). And y’all, this book has stats. Consider me corrected, o’ universe.
“Suck my dick, America.” Randy Mac sighed as he pulled his denim pack off the ground. His catchphrase, spoken without a smile. – Chain-Gang All-Stars
Imaginary Conflicts, Real Suffering
Adjei-Brenyah delivers real-world statistics and facts related to the story through footnotes. In a way it causes the book to read like one of my more passionate articles, with hyperlinks to supporting evidence added to every other word — so it’s fascinating to see a similar energy working so well in the context of a fictional story!
Chain-Gang All-Stars is predominantly about the American incarceration system, with a focus on Black experiences and history. The harrowing facts he shares through footnotes range from the individual, wrongful deaths of people like George Stinney and Tina Davis to excerpts of laws about tear gas and torture.
Adjei-Brenyah makes it clear that while his tale of gladiatorial combat between prisoners may be satirical and over-the-top, the human suffering and cost is entirely real. This is supported by a side narrative focused on family members of the incarcerated, which shows how widespread the effects of incarceration can be. As the book states, children of prisoners are six times more likely to become ‘justice-involved’ themselves.
Bury Your Gays likewise puts queer experiences and representation front and center, without shying away from questioning how and why they clash with corporate concerns about profitability. It also barely disguises its corporate stand-ins and has a brilliant and relevant choice of villain, compounding existing issues while also introducing new ones.
Our distraction-filled world makes it easier than ever to ignore real problems people are facing, so I can see why these authors would be interested in stating their morals and the issues loud and clear. I consider myself fairly well educated and still had things to learn from both novels, which I might have missed if they had been subtly woven into the speculative fiction worldbuilding.
Media Literacy?
It’s easy to see a trend like this and jump to worrying about declining media literacy. To some extent, I think that reaction is entirely fair! (I’ve brought up Netflix dumbing down their content more than once here.) It would be great if the entire world population could appreciate nuance and subtlety; the cynical part of me asks whether even these books will ever end up in the hands of someone who desperately needs to hear their messages.
But I do think loud and brutal honesty has its place, especially in a world as conflicted and dark as ours. Both books are also bombastic enough that I think what might elsewhere come off as preachy fits right in: Bury has fictional characters coming to life and hunting their creator, while Chain-Gang is heaped with hard-hitting satire. Both books also address trauma quite openly, which I think is always important!
Have you read either of these books, or another that seems to follow a similar trend? What are your thoughts on it all?
Thanks for reading and until next time ❤
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If there’s ever a piece in which to bring it up it’s this one, right? I’m fundraising as part of the Toronto Pride & Remembrance Run next month on behalf of some incredible organizations — my page is here if you’re able to help out at all!