{"id":101977967,"date":"2023-02-24T13:30:13","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T13:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=101977967"},"modified":"2023-02-24T13:30:13","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T13:30:13","slug":"friday-links-joy-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=101977967","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: Joy Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“we’ll wrap our arms, \/ my brother and me, \/\/ and become \/ in the surf rising” – Ross Gay, ‘Be Holding’<\/h2>

IT\u2019S FRIDAY AND WE\u2019RE PARTYING! Let\u2019s get in a good mood this weekend. If you\u2019re in the service industry, I hope you get great tips and those people approaching your door with five minutes til closing time decide to go somewhere else. THEN PARTY!<\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong><\/p>

After all that poetry and lyric essay business for the last two weeks, I was ready for some fiction. Leaping boldly from my shelf\u2014because with this vibrant of a cover this book cannot help but to leap boldly off of shelves\u2014was Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah\u2019s Friday Black<\/em>. This book was first on my radar back in August 2020, when my dear friend Chloe N. Clark assigned a story of his in a workshop. I was so taken I bought the whole book straight away. Normally, I\u2019m a stickler for reading short story collections in order. This was when my kid was like 20 months old, though\u2014full-on sprinting everywhere 13 hours a day and us with no childcare help. So I cracked it open to \u201cIn Retail,\u201d a quick-hitter I could read during toddler naptime, and Friday Black<\/em> immediately became the rare book that makes me cry. <\/p>

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These stories are wildly imaginative, the sort of world-slightly-tilted thing that makes you go \u201cwait a second, this is totally believable\u201d even as something unimaginably horrifying is happening. The George Saunders influence is present, but not in the way where you feel like he\u2019s just rehashing CivilWarLand In Bad Decline<\/em>\u2014Adjei-Brenyah is definitely a distinct voice. The stories are shot through with sadness, but not hopelessness, which is always what you want. Adjei-Brenyah is really great at creating fully embodied characters in a short amount of space, which makes stories like \u201cThe Finkelstein 5\u201d and \u201cZimmer Land\u201d really sing beyond their high-concept premises. \u201cLark Street\u201d is written like Millennial Denis Johnson, while \u201cThe Hospital Where\u201d veers fully into labyrinthine surrealism. These stories are super rad, get your hands on this book. <\/p>

And ohlookatthat, his debut novel, The Chain Gang All Stars<\/em>, is out in May. You can preorder it here<\/a>.<\/p>

LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>

  • The \u201cBombs Over Baghdad\u201d music video doesn\u2019t get enough credit for being a radiant burst of pulse-pounding joy. Look at how happy everyone is! My goodness. What a song, what a video. <\/p>