Is it even possible to be black and free?

Author Iata Mathis poses this question in her new novel, The Unsettled,

about three generations of a black family,

all looking for their own version of freedom.

That's next time on Notes from America.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Trisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Jamil Jan Kochai read his story,

Playing Metal Gear Solid 5, The Phantom Pain, from the January 6th, 2020 issue of the magazine.

Kochi was a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

His first novel, 99 Knights in Logar, was published in 2019.

Now here's Jamil Jan Kochai.

Playing Metal Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain.

First, you have to gather the cash to pre-order the game at the local Game Stop where your cousin works. And, even though he hooks it up with the employee discount, the game is still a bit out of your price range

because you've been using your Taco Bell paychecks to help your pops, who's been out of work

since you were 10, and who makes you feel unbearably guilty about spending money on useless hobbies

while kids in Kabul are destroying their bodies to build compounds for white businessmen and warlords.

But, shit, it's Kojima, it's Metal Gear. So, after skrimping and saving, like literal dimes you're picking up off the street,

you've got the cash, which you give to your cousin, who purchases the game on your behalf,

and then, on the day it's released, you just have to find a way to get to the store.

But, because your oldest brother has taken the Civic to Sack State,

...