Literatea is an interview series which brings together prominent and emerging voices in African writing, editing, publishing, translation, marketing, distribution, and retail to discuss the craft of bringing African storytelling to the continent and the rest of the world. From award-winning novelists and poets to literary agents and editors, from indie publishers and booksellers to prize juries—Literatea pours the first cup and stirs the conversation.
In this conversation about enduring one’s personal creative journey, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah talks about the importance of committing to one’s craft and telling stories with sincerity and skill.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was raised in Spring Valley, New York, and now lives in the Bronx. His debut collection, Friday Black, was a New York Times bestseller, won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. His first novel Chain-Gang All-Stars was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Books Are My Bag Awards, and selected as a New York Times Top Ten Books of the Year. Adjei-Brenyah is a National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ honoree.
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RÉMY NGAMIJE: What is a literary bar you have read recently that has not left your mind, heart, or soul?
NANA KWAME AJEI-BRENYAH: The book I’m reading now is Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward. This kind of question—thinking about “bars”—is meant for Ward. Her bars per page numbers are top tier. What I mean by that is she makes so much music and stunning images it is hard to choose a particular one. She does not take sentences off. She is one of the greatest living writers. I feel like for years I have avoided slavery narratives. But I am reading this one and it is a beautiful, important book of spirit.
This is a section where a spirit is talking to the protagonist.
“Only Those Who Foretell would have known that your people who were thrown overboard, who leapt overboard, who sank to the bottom of the ocean, would become one with the deep, and after that sinking, that they would sing. Only they would know that your people’s voices would rise from the deep, that their spirits would rise like water bubbling to air in the heat of the sun. Only Those Who Foretell would know that your people would be like vapour of my skirts. That they would transform the storm. That they would come into power and freedom.”
All I saw before this moment: my own rope.
“You must leap. You must do as your people did. You must sink in order to rise. Those Who Foretell see this. They read the water.”
RN: Now that is a bar, indeed. Jesmyn Ward has been dropping them since Sing, Unburied Sing and Salvage The Bones—they are the two books I have read.
I find the idea of bars, as they are used in rap and hip hop, so fascinating. That a writer can compose something lyrical, that carries with it a particular unique cadence that is used to convey a message, and that the bars can be stacked and layered and rifled off like it ain’t even a thing.
You know when a rapper hits you with a flow so mean half way through a verse you hit the pause button just to unpack everything that has been said? Is that something you consciously try to do as a writer when you are telling a story?
NKAB: I like thinking about this because, firstly, the idea of bars in rap is really beautiful. What is happening for me, at least, is my brain is flaring with excitement because it is impressed with how another brain uses language. Whether it be a double or triple entendre or a beautiful image or a concise story or all those things and others combined, when we scream “BARS!” we’re saying, “Damn, I’m delighted in your employment of language!” which is not a thing people do very often in other contexts.
Like a bar hits you over the head and you feel it.
That said, I do try to listen to the syllable level music and craft strong sentences. But at the same time if you are too “barred up” as a writer or rapper it can get a little corny. It can feel forced. In narrative work like novels or stories I am trying to serve the story first and foremost and sometimes saying things simply is a bar.
As a side note this aligns really closely with a conversation I am having with myself and others at the moment.
Besides reading Jesmyn Ward I am also reading Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. It is an extremely simple book on a language level, but the concepts are very complex science fiction and layered. As a writer that has a kind of dubious relationship with the term “literary” I have always considered myself the kind of writer that anyone might enjoy. Even those who are not very practiced readers. But reading this book, and enjoying it, I am realising I have, on some level, forgotten about a more simple pleasure that can be found in reading.
It is kind of like enjoying a great action movie. But most of the books I read are not like that, even though I grew up with fantasy series like Dungeon Crawler Carl I have almost let them fall out of my normal rotation. All this is to say there are so many ways to be dope as a writer.
I love writers that push themselves. I always try to push on both a language and conceptual level. But also, sometimes the answer is restraint, to just let things flow.
RN: What I like about rappers who can compose really clever bars is how judiciously they use them—holding back in this verse, but dropping hell-hot fire in that one. The same goes with writing, as you say. There has to be a balance between serving up story and serving up style. You cannot have more thread than cloth, or vice versa, if that makes sense.
And I think the best writers find a way that strikes a balance between wielding incredible powers of language with seemingly simple ways of telling stories. I say seemingly because simple is really hard to do, something, I have found, one returns too after years of exploration, discovery, mastery, and eventual return to the beginning of the journey.
You are talking about Dungeon Crawler Carl—brother, the bars in Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and the fire of narrative in Matilda and The BFG burn differently at this big age.
How do you know when to transition from dropping bars to “telling a story” in your own writing? These are not two intrinsically separate activities, necessarily, and you might not see them that way, too. But, I guess what I mean is: how do you know when you have flexed enough as a writer?
NKAB: This is a really good question and it is hard to articulate a good answer. I think I favour simplicity and precision. So even if I have a beautiful image or a clever simile I favour the simple and precise and trust that over the course of the story it will be evident I know how to write.
I guess I do not try to flex; I try my best to serve the story—all the while knowing the writing will sometimes ask me to demonstrate my ability in ways that are, hopefully, impressive to the perceptive reader. I serve the story before myself, always. That is how I think of it.
RN: To serve the story before oneself, perhaps, is one of the hardest things to learn as a writer. But it is so necessary for storytelling. To fade into the background, and to let the characters and the narrative take centre stage—this is something that seems to be at odds with the world right now.
There seems to be great emphasis placed on the creator being the story. Do you agree? So, for example, you will write a story, yeah, but there will be so much interrogation directed at how much of the writing is autobiographical as opposed to imaginative, or there will be an acute obsession with your biography instead of the world you have built on the page.
So, more Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenya, but not so much Friday Black or Chain-Gang All-Stars.
NKAB: I absolutely agree with this. I think we have become addicted to creator-content culture. We love to get behind the scenes and learn about the person. Sometimes the personality takes precedence over the art. I thought about this a lot and try my best to avoid this as best I can; I stay out of situations that do not uplift the book or whatever art project I am working on. If I am trying to be generous and not diagnose this phenomena as, like, Love Island brain rot, I think it has to do with how an artist accumulates in ways the art does not, at least not overtly.
What I mean by that is somebody might love Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars, but then it is like I get the sum points of the work even though each of them is greater than I could ever be at one particular time (because of the years of revision that went into each). I am not as clever or as considerate as either of those books, but to some people, because I wrote both, it’s like I’m greater than either.
I also think fame has become so many people’s drug of choice, the desire to be desired, stan culture. Sometimes attaching yourself to a person is a way to demonstrate what you believe in or care about and it is a lot more dynamic of an experience when it is a living human. I have a lot of thoughts about this but, mostly, I think it would be good if we rebalanced a little as a culture and let things be about the work a bit more.
RN: There is a danger in thinking that people—especially writers—are like their books. If the present moment in the world has shown us anything it is that few writers are as brave as their characters.
I agree, too, that fame is a drug, dangerous in even the smallest dosages.
What is your daily practice for not falling into the fame trap? For me, it involves reminding myself of my primary and most important citizenship: being a reader.
NKAB: I think daily practice is the key term. I think the same things I focus on to keep me solid as a person in general help.
So meditation and mindfulness practices keep grounded and help me see myself clearly. Therapy and also, as you have said, being a reader and for me being a teacher helps keep the ego in check. I love the idea of being respected for my work, but I also have legends who I look up to and know personally like my professor George Saunders who sets a good example for how to move through the literary world.
Humility for humility’s sake can be a little bit of a trap. But I think when you do work that intersects with the public it is essential. Humility, gratitude, integrity, generosity, and even compassion—that is what the people I respect most are about, that is what I aspire to be about.
I genuinely do not believe I am famous which also helps. Mindfulness, keeping a sense of the big picture, and remembering that if I have a voice in this world, I want it to be used in a way that is more useful than building my own personal legend—this is also important.
I do not need anymore self-aggrandising. I have always told myself and others I would rather be a great person than a good writer and I really, really want to be a good writer.
RN: Why not both?
NKAB: Luckily none of us has to choose, but it is just a way of keeping perspective.
RN: I am not sure if being a good person involves ducking the basketball game you owe me because you are always conveniently on another continent. But, no worries, this hot sauce ain’t going anywhere and because ball is life I am certain we shall meet on a court somewhere eventually.
NKAB: Ha! There are many people on this planet who might be able to be me in basketball. You, my friend, are not one of them.
RN: But being a good writer is not really in doubt. Friday Black was a debut unlike any other. I would call it a collection but, really, it is a flex of stories. Tell me about the writer you were when you commenced that writing journey.
Was writing already a vocation you envisioned pursuing and what were the support structures in your life like at that time?
NKAB: Thank you, bro. Friday Black was written over a period of about five years (when I was between 21 and 26) and—I’m sure you’ll appreciate this—it was made with that first album kind of energy.
RN: Brother!
NKAB: I bet my life on that book.
RN: Listen!
NKAB: I was desperate and angry, to be honest. Angry that sickness and misfortune had led my family to so much financial difficulty. I was angry at my powerlessness. And I was feeling the anger that comes with growing into a consciousness as a young Black American. I was sad that mental health issues had all but disappeared my mom.
RN: Speak on it!
NKAB: A lot of the rappers I love, their first albums just have a certain energy to them. A kind of belief and hope against impossible odds. That is where I was as a writer.
I was learning who I was, figuring out my style and very sad and angry about pretty much everything. And because I was so desperate it became a vocation. I really linked it, in a magical thinking kind of way, to saving a really hard situation.
And getting into the MFA programme at Syracuse and learning I could teach this craft as well made it absolutely vocational to me. Writing was the only big enough container, I felt, that could hold all I was interested in and all I wanted to be. I am a lifer. It helped shield me from some of those harshnesses I wanted it to heal by giving me a place to put the energy.
In that first book I have a story where I make a kind of pact with a muse type figure. I really have more or less made that pact. It has been vocational for me for a while now. The support structures I had were that I come from Ghanaian immigrants that were serious and valued education. I got into the programme and that gave me some support as well. During this period, as I said, we had been evicted and were living pretty meagerly when I was home, but I had the support of knowing that I was at least in a context where people around me took the craft seriously. This was one of the greatest gifts of being in an arts program.
RN: While an artist has many stages in their career, I am most interested in who they were and what they did before they found an audience. There is something hungry, furious, and energetic in that phase before their work makes its way to the people who will most appreciate it. There is, I think, absolute freedom to create because, well, no one knows about them or their work, there is no prestige attached to their name, and performance has yet to creep into their craft. Of course, one possible exchange for that freedom is the high costs attached to the struggle of the start, the fear that things will not work out. The disappointment and despondency that comes with creating that first work can be as crippling as it can be freeing.
For example, with my debut, I found freedom in its writing and bitterness in its publishing journey. I would like to say that I had grace, that I was patient, but I was not. I wanted to wield the power cosmic and wrangle star fire for shits and giggles, man. Only much later did I appreciate the journey. And even now I am learning more things about steps I took in the past.
Like Miles Davis, I do not think that suffering is an essential part of creating art. But there has to be some sort of struggle any artist must overcome within their craft in order to create it. I would posit that one of the struggles in Friday Black was believing in putting all of the stories therein together, that they would work, and that the reader would “get it”?
Does that make sense?
Because the first album energy in it is fierce. “The Finkelstein 5”, “Things My Mother Said”, “Zimmer Land”, “Friday Black”, “How To Sell A Jacket As Told By IceKing”, and “In Retail” read like you were in a basement cypher session with nothing but bass lines and vinyl scratches for food.
And the follow-up question is this: what was the transition like when you got out of the basement and into the nice recording studio on the other side of town?
NKAB: Regarding the believing, because of the desperate nature of my life at the time I believed entirely. I was probably the only person in the world not shocked that it made the bestseller list. I cannot explain it, it might be pure arrogance and self-delusion but I believed.
I will say Get Out came out just before the book did and I had a sense it meant that the world was ready to see things in a way that resonated with my brand of humour, with glimpses of dark satirical stuff.
Besides being desperate I was also very self-righteous and I genuinely believed that a story like “The Finkelstein 5” had to be first. It was really, really risky and now that I know how difficult it is to put a book out, I appreciate how vulnerable it is. But, yeah, everything in that book I believed fully in.
And if I understand the follow-up. For Chain-Gang I was out of the basement. Only the thing was, it was basically recorded, or at least the first part of it, in the same basement cypher sessions as the first book. I wrote the first 100 pages—maybe more—of Chain-Gang before I had a book deal. I thought it would be a short story then it just kept growing. And then I finished it in a pandemic, not even sure the world would be okay. So I never got to rest on my laurels with Friday Black doing what it did. I also did not get a lot of money for it so I was still in the same place for the most part. I will say the difference was I knew on some level people would read it. I tried to put any stress I had about this into effort through revision.
The book I am working on now, though, I guess this one is being written in a nice recording studio, so to speak.
RN: We give thanks for the glow up.
NKAB: I am still getting used to writing from a place that is not physical desperation. I try my best to keep the training the same. Work hard, value precision, pay attention to the music of the sentences, read brilliant other writers, and trust that I will find the heart.
RN: It is always interesting to note that the way readers encounter a writer’s work is not always in the linear fashion one assumes that they were produced. Sometimes the second published work was written before the debut; or they were written in the same state of mind or life space.
Do you think Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars achieved similar levels of success because they inhabited the same creative space of production? How, then, too, does this new space in which you are creating—absent of physical desperation—infuse your work in any ways that you have noted?
NKAB: This is another good question.
RN: Brother, allow me, please.
NKAB: I have to manually remind myself and work via therapy to not feel as though I am in a state of physical desperation. So on some level, I still am.
I think the desperation coupled with an unwillingness to be satisfied with anything but my best on a line level and serious and lengthy revision periods for both books was part of what allowed those two books to do well.
Desperation is energy or heat, but too much of it can make you cook a project too quickly or over cook it. It is important to have that engine but so many other things are important too. Luck, for example, is a key secret ingredient which I have had loads of.
I am actively trying not to focus on my desperation as a key component even though I know on some level it was. Now I try to just let my willingness to give everything I have be summoned by a positive desire to make something worthy of a world I care about.
RN: It is good that you mentioned the importance of luck—there are really talented writers and skilled storytellers who, through no fault of their own, have not had the luck that we or other people in the industry have had. Do you think this luck exists in a higher concentration in places like the MFA programme you attended at Syracuse and the people who have helped to champion your work since your breakout?
I ask this because what I am trying to do with most of the literary projects I am involved in is to either duplicate or manufacture the set of conditions that made it possible for my work to achieve what it has for other people, especially from Namibia, where I live.
I guess what I am saying is that the desperation needed to fuel and create work exists in great abundance in many places. So, too, does the skill. But luck, fam, that shit is rare.
NKAB: I absolutely do think luck exists in higher concentrations in places like Syracuse. I think in the United States, at large, despite its overwhelming exporting of violence and general evils (in some ways because of its evil), it churns luck (for some) all over the place.
As a young person I was reminded of this many, many times by my parents who were both born in Ghana. It comes with downsides, some people grow narcissistic, cruel, and have an extremely false idea about their greatness, but if you have some self-awareness and look at how the world actually works, luck is a part of the equation for someone like me. Like there is no question that despite the difficulty I faced I am the beneficiary of immense luck.
I think that building institutions that can help give people a chance to, firstly, grow their awareness of the craft and think of themselves as writers, secondly, facilitate bridging that wide gap between writers and means of publishing work, and, thirdly, create conditions that people believe it is a worthy task to struggle on the page is a really special thing to try to do.
It is paying the gift forward. It is almost sacred to me to try to do something like that and I try to as well in much smaller capacities as a teacher and someone who likes to go into communities that would not have an author around to do workshops.
It is a special thing. I have seen the work you are doing, bro, it is inspiring.
It matters.
RN: Man, thanks for the kind words. I have also noted the numerous pieces of writing you have shared as well the numerous Instagram posts you have made highlighting your writing journey; not in an that “blessed and highly favoured” kind of way, but in an honest peeling-back-of-the-curtains to show the creative and technical factors that underpin each milestone.
I think there is something that writers from our demographic have to do in that way so as not to add to the mythology of “writers coming out of nowhere” or that moniker appended to the wealthy in which they describe themselves as “self-made.” I do not think that is possible in the literary community. There are many hands, hearts, minds, and souls involved in bringing any book to the public.
NKAB: Yeah. It is very important to me to not build up a personal mythos that makes my journey feel less than accessible to others. In fact I want the opposite, to make others feel that they can do what I have done and much more.
RN: You were recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most generous awards for anyone in the creative arts in the United States. I am certain that this kind of fellowship must have felt like it was an impossibility way back when. Mano e mano, does getting something like this change the way you approach your writing?
NKAB: The Guggenheim Fellowship is an extremely generous and prestigious award. And it has not changed much of my process to be honest. When I receive this or any award it is a moment, although the title, I guess, lasts forever. It is not like in my normal life I think of myself as a Guggenheim Fellow.
At this very moment I think of the sentence in front of me and not much more beyond that. I think maybe it changes my approach to job searching because my resume is differentiated somehow.
Other than that I am still me. I think it would be dangerous to let any external things, but especially validation or accolades, change my approach. Chop wood, carry water. The work is the work. Everything else is very generous commentary.
RN: Next up is the MacArthur Fellowship.
NKAB: From your mouth to God’s ears. The MacArthur, if I were to be so lucky, would legitimately change things in the sense of granting actual sustained financial stability and give me the space to create a more formal writing routine and have a house or whatever. Ha.
RN: What role do you think festival appearances in North America, Europe, and Africa have played in your work’s reception? Is there a festival you look back on as particularly meaningful?
NKAB: I think getting a chance to travel the world more than anything has grown me as a human being. The Open Book Festival in Cape Town, where we met, was actually my first time on the continent. It was immensely meaningful for me. That was special as it was also not very long after my father had passed so it just hit different.
I think when you can go and follow your book out into the world, really speaking to people, and forging a connection with a place, it can really allow a book to thrive. I think the festival and travel events are like tilling soil for the seed of your book. It helps to create the conditions that the book might be able to poke through and sustain.
But, also, it is much more mysterious than I think I could ever know. Like, I like to think that going to these places helps the book, but also it might be that being able to go places means the book has already done a lot and is pulling you through the world. Probably it is either or both.
The main thing is: I am grateful and I think it helps. And even if it does not, the chance to attend literary festivals has been one of the greatest gifts I have had as a writer.
Besides South Africa I loved going to Australia a couple of years ago as well as France just last year. Those are a few of the top ones for me. Even the Texas Book festival was special to me too. Prior to my first book I had traveled very little, so I do not take it for granted. It is a gift.
RN: I definitely feel you on the “book pulls you through the world” tip. It certainly does feel as though the work paves the way for you in many ways. Like, yo, look where that crazy idea you had two or three years ago has taken you.
I note the absence of the Doek Literary Festival in your list of appearances. We need to fix that. And fast. Who knows when the world might end. (Also…that one-on-one match-up…)
I am currently reading some of John Murillo’s poetry. From the Up Jump The Boogie collection. Lyrical, rich with swathes of urban mythology and its grim realities. There are bars galore in his lines and stanzas. Again, his work makes me think of Friday Black and the madness of the visions in that collection. Do you think there is another EP or mixtape of stories in you?
NKAB: Ah, of course. I am working on a story collection right now. A lot of times I think the short story is my soul form or the thing I have the most affinity for. But now that I have done a novel I think I just love how demanding the short story is. You cannot hide in it.
RN: I agree. The short story lends itself to so many uses. I love the rigour of its construction and production and the malleability of its form. It can be alloyed to any genre and, when it is done properly, it has the heft of a much longer narrative.
With that said, then, what do you think of the advice given to writers that they should attempt to write short stories before writing a novel? I have always thought of it as being incorrect, because one does not prepare for a marathon by sprinting and vice versa. Perhaps, though, it is the strict demands of the form that might be more instructive for the aspiring novel writer. What do you think?
NKAB: I do not think that there is a magic formula in terms of order or anything. I wrote a failed novel before I ever did my story collection. That said, I do see the potential benefit of studying and working with short stories for a very practical reason. Thinking through your style and artistic self over the course of a short number of pages and finishing a thing could potentially be more efficient than jumping into a 300-page project when you do not really have a strong sense of who you are as an artist. And it could potentially be easier to revise several stories because it is easier to revise a done thing than a novel you are still working on getting a draft of.
RN: Of course.
NKAB: And for me revision is the heart of the process, so learning that part is really important in my opinion.
All that said, the novel can be a beautiful learning place as well. It just requires more patience. The fact is we all have different tastes and some people have no interest in short stories, others have no interest in novels—though that is rare for a writer and it is somewhat clear that like in all things the market helps shape our interests.
My thought is never lose the beginner mindset and try things that make you uncomfortable. You will grow no matter what you work on.
RN: “You’ll grow no matter what you work on.” Does this apply to using so-called artificial intelligence too?
*Shakes can of crash-out energy and tosses it*
NKAB: Ha! I feel like one of its main drawbacks in creative spaces is it robs artists of the opportunity to grow. Growth comes from friction, from figuring it out, from difficulty. I also cannot respect art that relies on the stolen efforts of others to come to itself.
To me writers that use large language models for any part of their process are telling me they are not ready to do this at the highest level and that they have learned to be afraid of difficulty. Writing is hard, but it is rewarding when you respect the craft enough to work through the difficulty.
RN: I second you on not respecting art that relies on stolen efforts. It has been one of my biggest gripes with so-called A.I. And I insist on referring to it as “so-called” because I have not yet seen anything that marks it as intelligent. Like the artist that uses it, there is no growth, no development, no frictional change. Just an endless cycle of regurgitation.
Respecting the craft—that should be the theme. Just honouring the past traditions to which I belong and all of the readers and writers who make this literary thing possible. The more one immerses oneself in it, the more sacred it feels. Is this something you feel as well? And, as a teacher, how do you pass this on to students?
NKAB: I think it is so important to remember we are part of a great lineage of thinkers and artists. All of whom had to work and toil in craft. They had to struggle against that friction that is inherent in the earnest doing of anything. Art mirrors life. Effort and faith in and through difficulty can make miraculous things happen. And in my life as a writer it is the doing—that struggle—more than the having of a final product that has been what has felt most rewarding and most special.
I try to help my students see this and know that what we are doing in class is discovering ourselves, not just answering prompts or generating “content.”
The thing we are doing A.I cannot do; the thing we are doing is being human.
RN: Bars, my friend. Bars. It is apt that we end where we started: what is a literary bar that sums up your current take on life?
NKAB: I am just getting through with teaching this semester and in the first paragraph of his book A Swim In The Pond In The Rain George Saunders writes:
“At this level, good writing is assumed; the goal is to help them acquire the technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves.”
He is talking about what he is trying to do as a graduate professor of creative writing. I think it is a beautiful sentiment in general. There is a lot of evil and horror everywhere, but as artists we have to be defiantly ourselves.
So that is what I try to do, that is my take on life right now. Defy in the direction of self.