Kukuwa Ashun
Interview with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah makes his way to the podium at The Strand Bookstore after a laudatory introduction by Isaac Fitzgerald. On the inaugural Pen Out Loud event of 2019, a windy Thursday evening, the author wears a black baseball hat embroidered with the continent of Africa in gold. Adjei-Brenyah smiles bashfully at the audience. After the applause, he candidly remarks, “When I meet people on tour, one of the things I hear most often is: ‘I’m surprised you’re not more weird? I thought you were crazy!’”
In his brilliant debut story collection Friday Black (Mariner Books, 2018), Adjei-Brenyah invokes profound questions and conversations about Blackness, love, violence, capitalism, and fear. By submerging us into worlds that resist conventional genre norms, he unapologetically confronts the complexities behind retail stores, academic institutions, the judicial system, and so much more. Nafissa Thompson-Spires and Arthur Flowers respectively express how these stories are “deeply empathetic” and “an impassioned interrogation on the human condition.” In conversations with friends and classmates, I find myself brimming with an influx of words when asked why I would recommend this collection. But instead I simply say, “You just have to read this book.”
Adjei-Brenyah is the recipient of the Breakwater Review Fiction Contest, selected by ZZ Packer; the National Book Foundation’s Five Under Thirty-Five Authors for 2018, selected by Colson Whitehead; and the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Friday Black was longlisted for the John Leonard Prize and short- listed for the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize and the Young Lions Fiction Award.
The only son of Ghanaian immigrants, Adjei-Brenyah grew up in Spring Valley, a suburb of Rockland County in New York. Right after graduating from SUNY Albany in 2013, he pursued his MFA at Syracuse University, studying under the guidance of authors including George Saunders and Dana Spiotta.
We spoke about being raised in a Ghanaian household, the extensive and scrupulous writing process, and his passion for branding—both inside and outside of his debut collection.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: One of the first pages readers turn to when they open your collection is the brief and beautiful dedication page, which states, “For my mom, who asks, ‘How can you be bored? How many books have you written?’” I find it extremely compelling that she says “written” and not “read,” because now, here you are: an author of your own narratives. Can you talk about how your family and, specifically, how being Ghanaian has influenced your writing?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: It’s kind of hard to say how it’s influenced my writing because my parents, being who they are and where they’re from, kind of says everything about me. It is interesting how she did say “how many books have you written” and that was way before I expressed any interest in writing. There’s a stereotype of Ghanaian immigrants, children of African immigrants, or immigrants in general that have a thing . . . and my parents prove that to be very true. It might even be understated actually. They came valuing education, and they hate downtime. They hate to see their kids chilling, I think that’s what African parents hate the most, you know? So for me, I kind of grew up in that. But it’s hard for me to pick any one specific thing because it’s what I knew first.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: I definitely agree with that. I was always doing more work after my own homework. Like writing my A-B-C’s in my notebook over and over again.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: Yeah. In my writing—it’s in my book too—my dad really did tell us Anansi stories when we were in Queens. I’ve always had that oral tradition, even though I hadn’t had a chance to go to Ghana. It made me feel like I was a part of something bigger or a part of a community, with all my aunties and uncles and everything. Even when I didn’t see them for a long time, I grew up feeling connected to a community.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: I caught some winks to African culture when you use common African names like Fela or Ama or Akua. Even when the mother in “Things My Mother Said” says, “Auwrade”.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: My mom says “Auwrade” all the time. All the time. That’s like her standard, I’m-exasperated thing.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: And you were intentional about these choices because of the community you felt, even without going to Ghana.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: Yeah, it was intentional because that’s what I know. And I didn’t want to default into some other homogenous stan- dard just because it’s what I see in the books I read. I mean, she would also say “oh my god,” but “Auwrade” is how she’d say it. To me that has a very specific energy. Just like in the story, my mom would say “I am not your friend.” Some people’s parents decide all they want to be is their friend; for my mom, that’s very explicitly not what she’s going for and I just try to represent that. I did try to be intentional, but it wasn’t that hard. It’s just about me being honest about my own life and not shaving that away to fit some imaginary, accessible, generic space. Even with sentence construction, I specifically did have to become intentional about it—I wrote, “My arm is paining me.” My dad would say that, you know? When I wrote it down, I didn’t really think, Oh, I’m writing some Ghanaian thing. That’s just how my father sounds. To some people, that might read weird, it might be strange to say it that way. So in different levels when I had editorial feedback, and people kind of questioned it, I sort of just understood that they don’t know that. And I keep it because, for me, it meant something. I didn’t realize that until you have people kind of pushing against it.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Wow, that’s incredible. It’s almost like it’s a second language.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: My father is Fante, my mother is Fante— as someone who doesn’t speak Twi though, you still have an appreciation for something.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: What were some of the factors that helped you decide to continue the road within academia?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I discovered what an MFA was a couple months before I was applying. It seemed to me like a legitimate way of trying to pursue this. Also, because of my parents, who are very much interested in me being a lawyer, doctor, engineer—that kind of thing. I needed a way of doing it that could justify that I was serious. For a long time, in my parents’ mind, it was “Nana’s a professor.” They thought of it like that.
I liked it because it was free, so I could do it. That was also important for me. I didn’t wanna move back home. Physically, it was too stressful for me. I really wanted to try to go straight out of college.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: But to study and share your work among established professors and your fellow peers must’ve felt incredible. How important is support and generosity toward your work from your community?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: It’s super huge. And I’m saying this on the train with MFA people, but I would say this anyways. My first year—I was twenty-two, you understand much better than most people—there’s people of all types of ages, all types of backgrounds. I felt dumber than everyone. I didn’t feel like I was super adequate. My workshop group was incredible for me and I made great friends there. My first workshop leader was Dana Spiotta. I wrote really bad stories in her class and she was just so encouraging still, so generous. It was huge because some people have that fire that won’t go out no matter what. I mean, I don’t think that I would’ve quit, I just think I was putting so much pressure on myself for such a long time, prior to Syracuse, that it was really nice to have people make me feel like I was doing something worth doing right away. All the professors here were extremely generous, but also my classmates were really generous as well and that was a big part of the potential magic for being in an MFA program. I know that’s not always the case, but it was super cool.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: I definitely understand, coming in as a twenty-two- year old and thinking, Wow, I feel like I have to measure up to what other people have been doing.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I’m sure there are people who are fifteen, twenty years older than you in the program. I didn’t realize how young I was then, until now, actually. I’m glad that you’re doing it, I think it’s great. It’s hard. I’m sure it’s challenging. It was for me anyways.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Now you have the opportunity, and you’ve had the opportunity, to teach and create your own syllabus. Which texts have you enjoyed discussing with students?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: So many! I use a lot of short stories. I use ZZ Packer in almost every class, the story “Brownies” specifically. I think I might start using the story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.” That’s a good story. I use “Sonny’s Blues” very often, you know, Baldwin. I use a couple of Zadie Smith’s stories, one is called “Two Men Arrive in a Village,” which I feel makes students interested in a certain kind of way. I like to figure out stories that challenge them in terms of things they’ve never read before. I teach undergrad so I like using Denis Johnson. In poetry this year we used Chen Chen and Solmaz Sharif. As one of my mentors and professors, I use George Saunders a lot, too. I try to mix it up but it depends on how I’m feeling. I use Roxane Gay often, and I used her introduction to Best American Short Stories to frame one of my classes this semester, specifically thinking about political-slash-apolitical stories and what it means to be a political story. And we kind of discuss that. So, I use a lot of people.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: How rewarding is it to talk to students of all ages about writing and the art of storytelling?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: It can be the most rewarding thing in the world. This year, for example, for attendance in every class, I ask them a question to get them talking, just so there’s some hope or spirit where we’re all talking to each other and there’s a good space. One time I asked, “What are you worried about or what are you afraid of?” One of my students was like, “Well, I’m afraid of sharing my poem today and I’ve been worried about it for two weeks.” That was a day a poem was due and they were going to share it.
We had read poetry by Chen Chen, who has an MFA as well. His book is called When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities and we read his poems through the end. Everyone reads, and then the student who’s afraid to read goes second to last. She reads a poem that was influenced by Chen’s poem, “Race to the Tree.” She’s also a Chinese exchange student, and originally from China and she read a poem about trying to be herself and coming into her queerness and her identity that was just incredible. Long story short, four of us are crying in the class and we’re all super floored by her. It was a moment for her. She since added English as a major, but in that moment though, the whole class is like, Oh my god, something real, something super powerful just happened. Obviously, it was mostly her, like 99.9 percent her, it’s just the idea that the class, our space, had even 1 percent to do with that, is extremely rewarding for me. Now she’s deemed herself as a creative writer and it’s just really nice.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: It’s also because you’ve facilitated a space where people are comfortable. Like a safe space.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: For me, it’s really key. The first three weeks of class, actually, is me trying to cultivate a sense that we can be super brave. You want to make it okay for students to be vulnerable with each other. My whole pedagogical attitude is about engagement. One, this is gonna be a fun place. Two, no one is gonna try to crush you here. That’s what I think about as a professor.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: That’s amazing! So, I just want the record to show that Friday Black’s release date was on my birthday, on October 23rd.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: [Laughter] Oh yeah? It’s not even half a year ago, isn’t that crazy?
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Yeah! Your collection wasn’t on my radar yet, but I do believe that this was an act of fate, it was set in stone that we’d have this conversation. Right?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I believe in that.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: [Laughter] I definitely just wanted to throw that out there. Let me not fangirl, but if I was given the time and space, I’d go on for days about how creative and enchanting this collection is. One thing I do want to point out is how intimate some of these narratives are, like “The Finkelstein 5” and “Things My Mother Said.” I enjoyed how these opening stories were evocative of a private conversation within Blackness. As in, things like code-switching or the “I am not your friend” didn’t need to be explained. During the writing process, do you think about intimacy and how it will travel between yourself and your prospective reader?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: That’s a great question. I don’t know how conscious this is but a lot of things I’m afraid of I write toward often. I think intimacy, being a motive actually, is a new thing for me. So I try to not hold back that stuff. Even in that first story, a lot of the beginning part is sort of suppressing what you’re really feeling. I don’t know how I exactly think about it, but I think about how I could be earnest and honest and really real about what I’m feeling here. Where am I hiding? That’s maybe a negative way of thinking about it, but that’s what I usually think about it. Like here, I’m hiding. There are other stories where I totally wrote out the whole heart of the story because I was afraid to. I didn’t want to include something that was difficult for me. So, I think, going toward where it’s scary, where I’m afraid, usually is where that intimate energy may come from.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: I think a lot of us are scared of writing toward what we’re afraid of, and what we don’t know, for the sake of not being as authentic as possible.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I just did an exercise with my workshop where I looked at four, or five, versions of “Things My Mother Said” which I wrote while I was in grad school for a prompt. I did it because one of the other professors had asked me for the drafts I had and another student told me they had looked at them. So I was like Oh, maybe I’ll look at them and show my students, just to show them that revision is real; these stories are in my book but what’s really bad? I did something different than normal, I didn’t look at it until class started because I wanted to surprise myself. I was shocked because it’s been so many years. The climax, if you want to call it that, is, “My mother said, you are the best thing that happened to me.” For several years that wasn’t in the story, which seems crazy to me. But I think, it was almost too raw, too real, too much for me. The earlier drafts had a lot more pretty writing, and not really saying anything and hiding how deeply I felt about my mom for real. I was just saying: I see you, I understand you, I love you. So that was hard for me. Through revision, you feel the pressure, so to speak. Sometimes you get in your way as a writer, at least I do. After years of working on it, I was able to get out my way a little bit. Like just say what you need to say, that was it. For all my stories, I think I’ve learned to try to do that work. For me, usually through hardcore revision you get to that place.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Speaking of revision, leading to my next question, one of the things I loved paying attention to in your collection is craft. Specifically how language becomes incredibly direct when violence is conveyed. Like all of a sudden, Deirdra is shot dead and Emmanuel’s final death is an image of “hardy red confetti.” It’s like you intentionally chose not to embellish violence with excessive language, in a way that other writers might choose to implore. Is this done in the revision process or do you find yourself incorporating this technique in early drafts?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I try to be intentional in all ways about the violence. It’s almost case by case, but with Deirdra, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the fact of her getting murdered, like romanticizing it in a certain way, because there’s so much more to the story. With that said though, I’ve said this before, she kind of gets an unfair treatment in my mind. Because she’s forced to be this person to a person who has wronged her. The way I justify it in my brain is that she’s becoming something extra human now. Whenever there’s violence, I don’t want to hide from it because, the bottom line is, the institutions which create violence are attacking us in a lot of these stories.
Roger Reeves does a talk about how, if you’re not careful, you recreate the violence you mean to dismantle and I try really hard not to do that. There are a lot of different ways in which you can do that. One way is by implicating yourself, which is what I try to do in Friday Black, or you can think about why I need this violence to be really intense. In “Through the Flash,” there are sections of the violence being pretty embellished, in my opinion. That’s because I wanted to have a sense that this person is really the worst. If I just tell you that, you won’t agree—until I show you. So I try to assume that it is possible that if I’m not really vigilant, I’m actually doing the opposite of what I want to do. If I don’t, on a sentence level, be very decisive and intentional, I might be recreating violence that I actually want to dismantle.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: In regards to language, I can’t help but think about titles. Like the alliteration of “The Finkelstein 5,” the fragmentation of “The Hospital Where” and even “Zimmer Land” which reads as a suggestion to Zimmerman. Do titles come to you after a story is complete or before?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: Usually by the time I get a draft, I’ll have something. Right now, I have two stories that will maybe be in the book after the next book, and I have those titles ready, just because they’re in my head. So, it depends. I do like titles because in my mind I like to think I’m good at that stuff. As opposed to being good at writing, I like to think I can do titles. “The Hospital Where” is such an interesting thing to me. It varies, it really depends.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: When you spoke at Strand a few months ago, you explained how satire is an institutional presence, not just one character. We definitely see that as a thread across multiple stories. The one that immediately comes to mind is the corporation of Zimmer Land. How important was it for this noxious corporation to stress a visceral, in-your-face interactive park to justify injustice?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: For me, it’s a fun and interesting premise. In relation to your last question, Zimmer Land can be when you do embellish violence, but you don’t do it in the right way, for me, a book can be Zimmer Land if you’re not careful, you know? I wanted that corporation to be very much steeped in that corporate talk that is both very particular, but not really saying much, that asserts a stance but also no sense of responsibility. I wanted to get that sort of energy. They do that by protecting their intentions as opposed to the reality of their effects. That’s important for me.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: If you had to choose a story in Friday Black where you were forced to take a step back from, in order to come back to it later, which one would it be?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: For me, it takes a long time. “The Finkelstein 5,” I stepped back from the most times and came back, and stepped away, and came back to over the years. Even the very short story, “Things My Mother Said,” took a couple of years for it to get there. I was pretty young so I was growing. It took a long time for “Lark Street” to get to a place where I’m like, Okay, I’m sort of realizing this story is about someone who is dumb and center- ing himself. That took a long time too. So all the stories, for me actually, almost all of them I had to leave and come back to more than once, and for more than a month or two, to get where it needed to be.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: When we discussed “Lark Street” in class last week, a number of people in my class said they’d never read a story like it, and it was phenomenal.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I appreciate it! With “Lark Street,” I was like, Man, am I allowed to do this? I’m lucky that my workshop had several women workshopping that story and it took me awhile to get where it needed to be. It wasn’t easy. It took me tough growing up, actually. The story in the beginning was very much about this guy looking at himself only, but not seeing that. And the story didn’t see that, that was what it was doing. It took me awhile to be like, oh this is what this could be about, I could push this in a way that’s smarter. That one I actually tried to draft before I got to the MFA. So again, several years of coming back and trying . . . It was very different a long time ago.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Before we wrap up, I do want to hear about The Season Cometh! Some people don’t know about this brand, and I feel like people generally don’t know of any outside projects that writers do. Is there anything you’d like to share about it?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: The Season Cometh is now my production company, actually. Before I got to the MFA, my last year of college, I was in a writing contest and it was one of those that required boasts. In the process of that, we kind of started saying “Killa season, killa season” like Cam’ron, I don’t know. Then, I don’t know where “The Season Cometh” came from but I changed it to that and other people started adopting it. So we were like, Let’s make it a thing! I think I am going to come out with more hats, but I don’t think of it so much like a clothing thing, like a physical brand, as much as an attitude. It’s funny because the first shirts, we wrote “lost cause” on them. Again, I like naming stuff, like anti-capitalistic things. I like branding, but not brands, if that makes sense. [Laughter]
It’s almost like how Nipsey—I’m kind of devastated by his passing—he had “The Marathon Continues.” The Season Cometh is like that, like that kind of a mantra. It was a mantra for ourselves, and now I made it my production company, sort of like thinking about a way of thinking. It’s good because it has grown with us. In the beginning it used to be, our time is coming, we’re gonna be on, ah ah ah . . . Now I think it’s a lot more like growth is a process. The Season Cometh is like we have more to look forward to, always. I don’t want it to be an anti-mindfulness mantra. It’s good for people to understand that right where you are is important, The Season Cometh is for when you’re stuck or down. Which is why we say season: it’s to remind ourselves that we’re always working. Right now, we’re doing the thing that’s going to make tomorrow what we want it to be. As opposed to living perpetually in this imagined future, you know what I mean? That’s what The
Season Cometh is about, and I think it’s going to be in more and more places next year.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: That’s extremely exciting.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: It’s crazy to have an interview asking about it actually. No one has asked me about it before.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: It’s also incredibly authentic in a way that we get inspired by all different sources in other mediums. You’ve mentioned how you structured the stories in your collection with as much precision as a tracklist. You find yourself influenced by other mediums, which is definitely worthy of talking about. If you had to name an artist who has influenced your trajectory, who would it be?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: For my age, is it not cool to say that I’m a huge J. Cole guy? I mention Kendrick in my book because he’s a big deal for me. I just wanna say I was huge on him before he became Superman. I’m trying to think of non-rappers, but all I can think about are rappers.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: But I mean rappers have flow and beat. They help us through the best and worst days of our lives.
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: Yeah! That’s why I’m so sad—when I was on tour just now—I used to listen to Victory Lap in every city, every city, because it just helped me. Touring is so tiring and can be so stressful. Now I’m trying to be on a Noname-type vibe because I like how she’s lowkey and just trying to make art. I like Noname and Jenkins. Chance the Rapper, again, belongs to the whole world now, but I used to like Chance a lot.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: Used to?
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I still do, but my favorite project of his is Acid Rap, and his most recent is my least favorite. I’m still a huge fan. But, business-wise, I think of Hov. I don’t wanna be as physical as they are ever, but I think about them when I think about signing contracts. Like, what would Hov do? I think about that a lot, literally. You can’t have white people bullying you into some dumb contract, you know? I feel like Hov would never let that happen.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man!
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH. Right! [Laughter] He’s like, “Let me handle my business, damn!” That’s really real!