The BattleGround

Much of the novel takes place in a number of arenas, called BattleGrounds, that function as the stadiums in which the hard action-sports promoted by CAPE unfold. The arenas are enormous, loud, and designed to accommodate as many spectators as possible. They are also almost exclusively perspectivized by individuals who are in the arena itself, allowing Adjei-Brenyah to communicate the imposing enormity of the space on the people forced to fight and die inside of it. The association of state-sanctioned violence toward prisoners (most of whom are Black) is intentionally allowed to play out against the familiar hallmarks of sporting arenas in the real world as a means of communicating the casual voyeurism that underlies white experience of Black suffering in present-day America. In other words, the setting in which the conflicts between the Links play out serves to emphasize the ways in which white experience amounts...