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exercise 3
5
Identify the short simple sentences and fragments in the following passage from “Friday
Black” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Discuss their effect.
Maybe eighty people rush through the gate, clawing and stampeding. Pushing racks and
bodies aside. Have you ever seen people run from a fire or gunshots? It’s like that, with less
fear and more hunger. From my cabin, I see a child, a girl maybe six years old, disappear
as the wave of consumer fervor swallows her up. She is sprawled facedown with dirty shoe
Redefining America
prints on her pink coat. Lance walks up to the small pink body. He’s pulling a pallet jack and
holding a huge push broom. He thrusts the broom head into her side and tries to sweep
her onto the pallet jack so he can roll her to the section we’ve designated for bodies. As he
touches her, a woman wearing a gray scarf pushes him away and yanks the girl to her feet. I
imagine the mother explaining that her tiny daughter isn’t dead yet. She pulls the little girl
toward me. The girl limps and tries to keep up, and then I have to forget about them.
“Blue! Son! SleekPack!” a man with wild eyes and a bubble vest screams as he grabs
my left ankle. White foam drips from his mouth. I use my right foot to stomp his hand,
and I feel his fingers crush beneath my boots. He howls, “SleekPack. Son!” while licking
his injured hand. I look him in his eyes, deep red around his lids, redder at the corners. I
understand him perfectly. What he’s saying is this: My son. Loves me most on Christmas.
I have him holidays. Me and him. Wants the one thing. Only thing. His mother won’t. On
me. Need to feel like Father!
Ever since that first time, since the bite, I can speak Black Friday. Or I can understand
it, at least. Not fluently, but well enough. I have some of them in me. I hear the people,
the sizes, the model, the make, and the reason. Even if all they’re doing is foaming at the
mouth. I use my reach and pull a medium-size blue SleekPack PoleFace™ from a face-out
rack way up on the wall. “Thanks,” he growls when I throw the jacket in his face.
I jump down from the cabin and swing the reach around so none of them can get
too close. The long rod whistles in the air. Most of the customers can’t speak in real
words; the Friday Black has already taken most of their minds. Still, so many of them are
the same. I grab two medium fleeces without anyone asking for them because I know
somebody wants one. They howl and scream: daughter, son, girlfriend, husband, friend,
ME, daughter, son. I throw one of the fleeces toward the registers and one toward the
back wall. The crowd splits. Near the registers, a woman in her thirties takes off her heel
and smashes a child in the jaw with it just before he can grab the fleece. She inspects the
tag, sees it’s a medium, then throws it down on top of the boy with a heel-size hole in his
cheek. I toss two large fleeces and two medium fleeces into the crowds. Then I deal with
the customers who can still speak, who are nudging and pushing around me.

exercise 4

Find six examples of short simple sentences or fragments in the selections included
in this chapter. Explain their effect in the context of the paragraphs in which you
find them.

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