‘In Retail’ by Nana Kwame Djei-Brenyah

In Retail by Nana Kwame Djei-Brenyah, 2014

The magic trick:

Combining the mundane and desperate

“In Retail” does a remarkable job of combining the mundane and the desperate. It’s about someone trying to get by in this life by working at some kind of Gap-like clothes store in a mall. Counting the minutes of a shift and the days of a life by keeping track of blue jeans inventory.

But there is this recurring mention of a woman who killed herself recently. She too had worked in the mall until jumping to her death from the fourth floor. So this isn’t just boring. This is life-threatening. Margins are slim. Slack is nil. This is life and death.

And that’s quite a trick on Adjei-Brenyah’s part.

The selection:

I’ve been here for a while now, and the most important thing I’ve learned is that if you wanna be happy here in the Prominent Mall you have to dig happiness up, ’cause it’s not gonna just walk up to you and ask you how you’re doing. That is, unless somebody who doesn’t speak the language walks up to you. That’s different.

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