The Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Writer Series welcomes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the third and final writer to be featured in the Cropper Series this fall

Alena Botros/Opinion Editor/The USD Vista

This past summer the University of San Diego’s English Department released a statement of solidarity, vowing to “reaffirm its commitment to the enduring work of anti-racism.” The department recognizes “the unique capacity of literature to remind us of the innate dignity of all human life,” and in that, recognizes the responsibility the department has in the fight against racism.  

The Lindsay J. Cropper Center for Creative Writing, established in 2004, announced that this year’s Cropper Memorial Writers Series would be “a celebration of Black creative work exclusively” in hopes to bring an understanding to a collective of human experiences.

Beginning with 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Jericho Brown, and later featuring the essayist and memoirist Kiese Laymon, the department ended the fall semester by welcoming fiction writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. 

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times bestselling author of “Friday Black.” From Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University where he studied under the award-winning author, George Saunders. 

On Thursday, Oct. 29, director of the series, Professor Bradley Melekian, introduced Adjei-Brenyah as “one of the most exciting young prose writers of our time.”

”His work has earned him tremendous acclaim for the searing, unique, fantastical manner in which he addresses contemporary issues,” Melekian said. Adjei-Brenyah began his discussion by addressing the concept of first lines of stories.

“I myself am less interested in first lines of stories and more interested in what I call first movements, that is the first movement of a story,” he said.

He defined this first movement as “the first faces and opportunities a character is made to actually do something or somehow demonstrate who they are. The first slice of characterization of a person or even a place. I am almost thinking about the first paragraph or pages in which a scene is happening and the reader is kind of amassing the store of knowledge and understanding the world before there is a break,” Adjei-Brenyah said.

A movement could be the first couple of things that happen. In fiction, this first movement builds what Adjei-Brenyah calls reader generosity. It uses mystery or simply something the reader does not understand. He used his story “Through the Flash,” the last story in “Friday Black,” to conceptualize to his audience this technique of first movements and the significance it holds. 

“You are safe. You are protected. Continue contributing to the efforts by living happily, says the soft voice of the drone bird hovering only a few feet from my window, as it has been for the last forever. Since I’m the new me, I don’t even think about killing anybody, still I touch the knife under my pillow,” he read. 

Readers are thrown into the world created by Adjei-Brenyah, a world unfamiliar to ours, but in accepting this confusion readers become generous. 

Adjei-Brenyah reminded his audience that “as writers, we have to remember, it is a privilege to be read.” 

“I try to make sure the journeys I take readers on won’t be trivial. I try to respect their wit and generosity,” Adjei-Brenyah said. “By believing this, even during the first movements of my stories, I am able to push on the language and situations and trust the reader is along for the ride.”

Adjei-Brenyah did an excellent job at discussing these techniques and then physically showing them to his audience. It became this real thing that writers are not simply learning but rather experiencing. 

Adjei-Brenyah later discussed his relationship with the first story of his book, “The Finkelstein 5.” He chose “The Finkelstein 5” as the first story in his book because he wanted it to be his introduction to the world — his first story in his first book. He wanted it to be the one thing his readers would take from his book. But, his “relationship to it has changed.” 

“It has characterized what some people think of me in certain ways,” he said. “I am sort of like, in some minds, a race writer. In some ways I love it for that, but in some ways that can be frustrating.”

Since its inception in 2004, the Cropper Center has prioritized bringing a diversity of voices to our campus. This year the Cropper Series chose to celebrate Black creative work exclusively. In Spring 2021, the Cropper Series will welcome our very own faculty member, poet Alexis Jackson.