FREE
Virtual – invite friends across the country!
6:00 – 7:00 pm EST
No requirement to read the book beforehand!
Riverbend Bookshop: Get a 10% discount on books with our book club! Mention us at check-out or use STOWEFORCHANGE for online purchases.

💻 Lead by Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate

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📖 Book Summary:
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are com­peting for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.