Ryan Coogler Paid A Steep Price For The Films He Made
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is filmmaker Ryan Coogler. You probably know his name as the director of Fruitvale Station, Creed, and both Black Panther films. Well, his new film is called Sinners, and it hit theaters just last week. It delves into horror with a genre-bending thriller set in 1930s Mississippi. The story follows twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan.

After surviving the trenches of World War I and navigating Chicago's criminal underworld, the brothers return home to Mississippi, hoping to start fresh by opening a juke joint. But peace does not last long. Instead, they're met by supernatural forces, vampires, who act as metaphors for oppression, exploitation, and systems that feed on Black life, body, and spirit.

Smoke.

They have a connection, but they live on. Even if the one that made them is killed, the best thing we can do for him is free his spirit from this curse. They gotta be killed one by one. How the hell do we do that? Sunlight that wouldn't stake to the heart.

Ryan Coogler says Sinners is also a tribute to his late Uncle James, who first introduced him to the blues. When he was a kid, Coogler would soak up his uncle's stories about Mississippi as old Delta Blues records spun in the background. Coogler's debut into the film world happened in 2013 with Fruitvale Station, which chronicled the final hours of Oscar Grant, a young black man killed by police in Oakland.

Since then, he's become the highest-grossing Black filmmaker in history and the youngest director to helm a billion-dollar movie with Black Panther. He decided to press pause on making Black Panther III to take the risk of making Sinners. Ryan Coogler, welcome to Fresh Air and congrats on this film. I have seen it twice and I enjoyed it very much. I appreciate you having me. I'm really thrilled to be here.

So, Ryan, you put Black Panther 3 on hold. That is a billion-dollar franchise, as I mentioned, to make this film in a moment when it seems like Hollywood is kind of playing it safe to sequels and remakes. What made you say, this is the story I have to tell now? And even if it means stepping away from the success of something like a Marvel machine, did that feel like a risk?

Yes, but to be honest with you, it would have been more of a risk to not make it. The movie was kind of on my heart. When you have something that clear, for me, it's a rare thing. And I had this idea, and it was very—well, I will go back to say, like, I didn't put anything on hold for this, you know. It was more, you know, like that last Panther film took a lot of time.

You know, it took more time than any of us had anticipated it taking. You know, those movies tend to take about two years. You know, this one took four because of... The last Black Panther film. Yeah, Black Panther was kind of favorite. It was because of the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman, rest in peace, the global pandemic. And in making those films, man, like...

There's so many there's so much interest. There's so many people involved. There's so many industry industries that are around a Marvel film. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because because, you know, and it is I'm not I'm not complaining about it. But there is a lot of pressure around those movies. And I just made two back to back, you know, so so so I was coming off. I was coming off of both of those projects.

you know, knowing there was no way I was going to do another one next. You know, I was going to have to do something, you know, I was going to do something different, you know, before I came back to that. But for me, I got hit by almost like a bolt of lightning,

You said this particular film, Sinners, was like it was on your heart to do. And I want you to take us back to when that idea really clicked for you that not only the creation of a story like this, but that the story didn't have to live in one genre or even one reality because you're blending so much here. I mean, you're blending history, historical drama, action, romance.

all against the backdrop of 1930s Mississippi. What made you realize that this mix was necessary to fully bring this story to life? This movie was, like, all about dichotomy, you know, and that's something that I've been dealing with my whole life. You know, this feeling of not totally fitting in or things not totally squaring with each other. You know, like, coming up, I was black, I was from Oakland, I was middle class,

And I was in these neighborhoods where my parents were kind of outliers. They got married young and they went to college, but they stayed in their neighborhood, you know. So I constantly, as a kid, would feel like I was like living in two different worlds. There's a dichotomy there. And I took the student serious. I was like a big old giant nerd. But I was also like a very, very serious athlete, you know, in where I'm from.

To be an athlete, you're adjacent to street culture. You know what I'm saying? You get cool points in the streets when you good at football or basketball or running track like I was. I was also raised Christian. I was raised Baptist in the Black Baptist tradition. You know what I'm saying? But I was going to Catholic school. So I was around these two very different types of Christianity people.

It's trying to reckon, you know what I mean, reckon with that on a daily basis. And it made me very sensitive to themes of identity, you know, and the dichotomy as an idea. That's so interesting because I really feel it almost with every single character in this film. I want to talk to you in a minute about how you complicate, like, villains, but...

The use of vampires in particular to like really articulate the story. One of the vampires says in the film, I want your stories and I want your songs. And that line is very important. You got to finish it though. He says something after that. He says, and you're going to have mine.

Yes, right, right. Exactly, exactly right. It's important. That's such an important line because it brings into focus that these vampires are like draining more than blood. They're draining culture and identity, but they're also offering something back like in replacement of that. Like, how did you land on using vampires as a metaphor for that kind of extraction? I mean, I'll be honest with you. To me, allegory, metaphor, metaphor.

All these things, I'm not going to tell you that they're not present in my work, right? But I was not, in this case with this project, I was not being conscious of it. You know, like I was trying to, you know, I was trying to communicate a feeling through cinematic language. And the reality is, as I've gotten older in this business and in this craft, you know, I realized that if I can make something true,

it's up to the viewer to draw those parallels. You take the thing and you analyze it. And within your analysis, you might project your own experiences, your own knowledge, you know what I'm saying? And you might draw certain parallels that weren't the parallels that I was intending, you know?

But I think it's super fascinating, though, that like when I asked you the question about like what drew you to this story and why you had to tell this story, you said immediately like my life experience is the reason why I wanted to tell this story. What drew you to a vampire story? Yeah, I love vampires, man. Like, you know, I love horror fiction. I love horror movies. I love fantasy movies.

I was raised, you know, around a lot of organized religion. And vampires intersect with all of that. You know what I mean? Like, I grew up, also grew up in Oakland, which is very dominated by street culture, you know. And, you know, all of these things, like I find vampires, they pull from all of that in terms of supernatural creatures, right?

And I thought when the idea came to me for this movie, I thought about other supernatural creatures as a thing that they confront at the juke joint. I went down the line, you know, like...

I thought about werewolves. I thought about zombies. You know, I thought about, uh, shapeshifters, which, which is some, and some, um, indigenous cultures, uh, might be referred to as skinwalkers. I thought about, you know, I got, I went through the whole Rolodex, you know, and, and I, and I kept coming back to vampires because of, um, everything that the vampire implies in public consciousness, you know, uh, vampires, uh,

It's not a steadfast rule, but it's pretty commonly associated with sensuality. Vampires are expected to be sexy, usually expected to be fashionable, usually expected to be knowledgeable, usually expected to be very powerful. It's not thought of as wrong if a vampire is converted to vampirism, but they maintain a human personality, you know, the human memories. It's a fascinating premise.

You'll see a version of this almost in every culture. And to me, that is just a fascinating thing. If I'm trying to have a conversation about our common humanity, which for me, this movie is about. And what better to contrast that?

Oh, the other piece that the vampire involves is the Faustian deal. I was very interested in that. Like this crossroads, like the devil, the deal with the devil kind of thing. Yes. Robert Johnson is who's most associated with that fable. And there's this tradition that

of things being taken. You know what I mean? Songs being sung over and over again, you know, by black people, you know, and then it was eventually done by white people. And because it was such an awfully racist time when they built this industry, genre was kind of born out of this idea, like where a black person would sing a song

And you're talking about a back-breaking form of apartheid. You know, at this time, in a black person's scene is a song. White person comes scene is the same song, same lyrics, same rhythm, same music. And they will say, all right, the black person's song, that is a race record. We're going to sell that as a race record. This song is rock and roll. You know what I mean? We're going to sell that as rock and roll. Like that concept, you know, and imagine me in 2025 saying, hey, I'm going to make a genre movie.

Not even understanding that classification of art and how some art is above other art. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's a period drama. Oh, this is a, this is a genre movie. You know, I realized, oh man, my people have been at war with this, you know, from, from, from the beginning, this has been a tool kind of, kind of lobbied against us, you know? So, so, so for me, the vampire was a creature that,

who's like human adjacent, who was human at some point, you know, became something else. But through their advanced age, they could see society for what it was.

Jack O'Connell, who plays Rimmick, the Irish vampire antagonist, he is relatable kind of in the same way that I'm thinking about Killmonger and Black Panther was relatable. Like, in many ways, saying, kind of speaking the truth, speaking the truth to systems of oppression. What draws you to creating antagonists who are in many ways right about the things that they know?

You know, it's not such a straight line, good guy, bad guy. Like each one is complicated. I think that's scarier, you know? It is scarier. Yes. Say more about that. I think it's more frightening when the film is about blues music, right? Which is storytelling. But it's also a music that I think was made to help people who are constantly under attack, to help them cope, to help them feel better.

and to remind them that they were human. You know what I mean? To remind them. And that's what the music is. And for me to have a creature who's incredibly powerful, who was human at a time, who is in pain, you know, and who needs to cope in a way that only a community can give him.

If I can make a film where you're afraid of this guy, you know what I mean? But that's really what's going on with him. I thought about it after I wrote it and I said, oh man, who does he lie to? And who is he honest with? Because for me, it's very clear that he identifies with these people.

Meaning like the black people, right? A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. He identifies with them. And that connection between what we experienced, we being African-Americans, foundational African-Americans who experienced under the forcible remove from the continent of Africa and placement, you know what I mean, in the Americas and the systems that were built after that, you know, our experience and the experience of the Irish people being forced to work

you know, land that has immeasurable abundance and wealth, but being denied that. Yeah. So, so, so I mean like the connections between the two cultures are really obvious to spot, you know, um, uh, you know, but, but also the, the, the history here in the States is very complicated. You know what I mean? Like, like, um, you know, uh, because of, because of, uh, uh,

the mobility of certain immigrants, the ability to become white. You know what I mean? Right, the Irish became white. Yeah, and what that took as it relates to camaraderie with us. You know what I mean? A decision had to be made. You know what I'm saying? And when you're making a movie about American blues music,

You know what I'm saying? Like the Irish folks got to have a place in that. You know what I mean? Like they were there. It's so interesting because I think that most of us don't know that history. And so when it shows up in the film, it makes sense when you go back and you read the history, which I did because I didn't know it going into this film. But I had to learn it afterwards. There's also the Chinese-American store owners who in the film are

operate these two grocery stores. So one is in the black part of town and then one is in the white zone. And they kind of exist in like this cultural limbo. Well, I mean, it's across the street from each other. Yeah, it's the white side of the street and the black side, yeah. Right. I mean, they're never fully kind of accepted in white or black communities, but more so it feels like in black communities. I had a friend who saw the movie and said, like, did this really happen? When did you learn about that history? Yeah.

You know, the reality is they were accepted in the black community. You know, how he found out was ironic. Like, you know, 10 years or so back, we were doing 23andMe, you know, and obviously they in the news a lot lately I've been seeing. But, you know, everybody was trying to find out their heritage. And for foundational black people, you know, we was jumping on it, right? Because of, you know, all of the indignities that,

done to our ancestors, at the top of it was the deliberate splitting of ethnic groups through the transatlantic slave trade to quell rebellions that were constantly happening. You know, so as a result of that, you know, we don't know what ethnic group we're from.

I spat in the tube and, you know, like, checked it out, and they just came back. It came back like 86% West African. And I was like, oh, man, that doesn't tell me what I—like, I knew that. I know that, yeah. And I shared it with Chadwick Boseman when we met. And he said, hey, man, check out African Ancestry because they do it the proper way where you can really find out, you know, some answers to these questions. And I did mine, and my wife—

whose father is African-American. Her mom is from the Philippines. You know what I'm saying? Sorry, pops takes the test. He tests his X chromosome, his Y chromosome, right? His X chromosome comes back West African. Guess what his Y chromosome comes back? Chinese. Han Chinese. You know, this man is in his 90s. He opened that packet up and said like, what the, you know what I mean? And where was he, where's he from? He was born in Chicago. Where were his parents from? From Mississippi.

That's right. So we so we we start digging into it. You know, we find we find out that, you know, my wife's black dad comes from these people. The erasure, you know, they were there. You know, there's not that is not, you know, like what I just said, the only thing false in this movie is the vampires. You know, you know, they were they were they were absolutely there.

Our guest today is filmmaker Ryan Coogler. We'll be back right after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from NPR sponsor Disney+.

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They were. They were. But we had to we had to transplant them. And then we used we used digital technology to replicate them at times. Did you ever have a moment in a cotton field in the making of this? Well, I had a moment before, like when I was still trying, when I was still when I didn't have a movie in my head just yet. But I was but I was dealing with a lot of the elements. I was working on Panther 2 and I was in Byron, Georgia.

And I looked out of the window when my team was driving me to the hotel and I saw my first cotton field in person. What was that like? Man, it really messed me up, man. I told him to pull over, you know, because I was already sad and contemplative, you know what I mean? And I got out the car and walked into it and, you know, took a piece. I took a piece home. I still got it at home now. But, you know, the fact that I had been at this age and done all that I'd done and had never seen anything,

You know, I wear cotton every day, you know, and I know the story of my people. And, you know, the fact that what for many years has been the most powerful empire in the world sentenced them to that being a life working in these cash crop fields. And I like looking at it, seeing it for the first for the first time, it messed me up. And I know I wasn't done with it.

I'm really struck by what you said that, you know, the blues connected people to their humanity. It reminded them that they were human. And blues serves really as the sound and the soul of this film. Your relationship with the blues, you talk about your Uncle James. What music did he play around you? What was he into? Man, he played all of it, man. He was big on Aubrey King. He was big on Muddy. He was big on Holland Wolfe. He was big on Coco Taylor.

Big on John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Mississippi Fred McDowell. He's big on all of them, man. You being a kid of the 80s and the 90s, what was it like for you to sit at his knee and listen to that music? Did you appreciate it at that young age? I just liked being with him. I wasn't thinking about the music. I associated it with him. And at that time...

The blues wasn't for, I didn't think the blues was for me. I didn't think it was mine. You know, like, like it was, it was just all man's. And like, and like, to be honest with you, I thought the blues was like for white people. You know what I'm saying? Cause, cause at that time, you know, you had like the movie, the blues brothers, which I hadn't seen, but you know, on the poster, it was these white dudes with these hats. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, so I was, I was like, okay,

You know, the blues is for all black people and it's for white people. You know what I'm saying? Because I was listening to Tupac and what's crazy is my favorite song, group and music video was Bone Thugs, Crossroads. Not even knowing that like the Crossroads is like, you know what I'm saying? Like that's a blues thing.

You know what I mean? Like it made its way in the Cleveland Gangsta Rap, but it was really that, you know, but I didn't know. I was a kid and it took my uncle dying and then me listening to the music without him anymore to explain it to me. But I'm trying to hang on to every word, trying to see if, you know what I'm saying? Like if I could get a clue about my uncle's life or like why he liked this stuff, you know what I'm saying?

And then, boom, I realized the brilliance of it. Like, this was the base that everything came out of. How did legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy become part of this project? It was so cool to see him. That was, like, a really cool cameo. Buddy Guy was, like, the last musician my uncle would go see consistently. You know, he would get dressed up and go to his concerts, like, up to his death. So when I was finishing up the script, I had this idea that,

When I got to those last few scenes, I was like, oh, man, wouldn't it be cool if, like, wouldn't my uncle get a kick out of Buddy Guy being in this movie, you know? So I kind of got that. I kind of had that idea. And I talked to my casting director, Francine Maggieler, and my producers, Zinzi and Sev, and said, hey, I want to try to get Buddy Guy in this movie. And, you know, everybody kind of panicked a little bit, you know, but then, you know, we got into it. And Zinzi and I went out there and went to his restaurant,

Blues Club, Legends. I fully expected Buddy God to say, hey, man, it's nice to meet you, kid, but I'm not being in a movie. You know what I mean? Like, I'm good. You know, I'm almost 90 years old, bro. You know, like, I don't have time for that. And so I was prepared for that. But his kids, man, they were smiling at me. You know, and I got to sit down, and he's like, look, you know, I don't know who you are or what you do, but my grandkids...

Tell me I should sit with you and I should hear, I should hear you out, you know, and I've decided, you know, whatever you, whatever you need from me, because they speak so highly of you, you know, I mean. Has he seen the film? Have you guys talked? He has. Yeah. We showed it to him. We showed him to him in Chicago. What did he say? He gave it a stamp of approval, you know, like, like, you know, cause you know, that was his life, man. He was a sharecropper in Louisiana and, um, and had to make the decision to leave home and,

He has so many beautiful stories, but a lot of them are heartbreaking, man. Like he wears polka dots, polka dot suits, polka dot guitars. And I asked him why. And he said when he left home to become a blues musician, he told his mom he was going to make enough money to buy her a polka dot Cadillac, you know, and she passed away before he could do it. So the polka dots became his trademark. You know what I'm saying? And just that story, man,

of him having, like me imagining this nearly 90-year-old man having to explain to his mom, hey, I'm going to leave home. I'm going to try to go make it with this guitar. You know, while she's in what was a slave shack in Louisiana. You know what I mean? Like sharecropping. You know, and he's here in 2025 completely lucid telling me all about it. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Ryan Coogler. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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There is this moment when one of the twins, he says something like, it's better to deal with the devil you know. And he's referring to having lived in Chicago and up north and gone all across the world, but now he's back in Mississippi. And you being a guy who was born and raised on the West Coast in Oakland, your accent gives it away. What did you learn growing up about

Kind of those myths, like you talk about the shame a little bit, but those myths that somehow the West or the North or the East was better than the South. I was born in the wake of the military defeat of the Black Panthers. So that dream of a better life in the West, you know, I was gone. You did not grow up with that myth that where you are is better than the South. No, I grew up. Look, the first movie I seen in theaters was Boys in the Hood, you know, which which which which.

You know, I was five years old when my dad took me to see that movie. And, you know, that was what was happening, you know, down on Highway 5 from us. You know, I was four years old. You saw Boys in the Hood at four years old? I might have been actually five. Yeah, yeah. I was born in 86. I think that movie came out in 91. Yeah, I was five years old. You know, my dad, but, you know, my dad was, you know, dad in his 20s. He heard that it was, he had just lost his father before I was born.

My mom's dad died before I was born. Both my parents' fathers died within two weeks of each other, right after they got married. And, you know, I heard that this was a movie black fathers should text their sons to, so he took me. You know, did the same thing with Malcolm X like six months later. Five years old in the theater watching Boys in the Hood.

Do you remember the scenes that were seared into your brain that stuck with you? Because that's a real powerful movie for a five-year-old. I remember the whole movie. My memory with movies is pretty solid. Yeah, I remember all of it. I saw Malcolm X shortly after. It was really ironic because we just premiered Sinners in that same room at that same theater. And my dad sat in the same row.

You note it in the moment that, like, wow, my dad is sitting in that same row. Absolutely, man. I was a mess. Yeah, I was a mess the whole night. Yeah, yeah, I was a mess the whole night. It's my favorite screening of anything I ever made. You and Michael B. Jordan, you guys have worked on Fruitvale Station and Creed, Black Panther, and now Sinners. In Sinners, he plays twin brothers. Why twins? It's a great question. The film deals with dichotomy, as I mentioned, and dichotomy.

I was born into a family with loads of twins, specifically like my mom's older sisters were identical, my Auntie Marilyn and my Auntie Carolyn. So you saw that intimacy of twins up close? Oh, yeah. My whole life. Like I can't, like my aunts have always been around. One of them was my godmother, you know. So they always been a part of my life. The dynamic between them and the stories, you know, they're in their 70s now and they live next door to each other.

But the stories, man, of, like, them beating people up and, you know, like, the fact that they can't live with each other, they can't live without, they're constantly arguing.

You know, the games that we played with people when people couldn't tell them apart. And the fact that us and our family always could. We could turn our backs and feel one of them come into the room and know which one it was. You know what I'm saying? So it was something that I was always interested in exploring. And it felt mythical. The other thing is like identical twins are kind of always outlaws. You know, they're kind of always local celebrities, right?

And like, there's always like a level of, um, of othering that happens with them.

So I was talking to filmmaker Rommel Ross a few months ago about his basketball career. Oh, yeah, Rommel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He relayed how hard it was for him because, you know, he played basketball from the time he was a kid all the way through college. And then he got an injury. And it took him a long time to, like, sit in this role as filmmaker. And you have a similar story. You played football in college. You suffered a shoulder injury. What was that process of transition like for you, especially when there's so much of your identity tied to, like, being a ballplayer?

So that wasn't totally accurate. I suffered a lot of injuries, like broke all type of bones. But injuries didn't take me out. I was actually healthy when I stopped, which was more difficult than if I wouldn't have been, I think. Because I made the decision to stop playing when I could have kept playing. Why did you make that decision? I think my heart was in filmmaking more, and I knew I wanted to make films while I was young.

You know, because I felt like young people weren't represented in the industry behind the camera. You know, like I could feel it in the movies. Whenever I watch a movie about a young person, I was like, man, I don't know if this is accurate. You know, and I realized, oh, yeah, man, like, you know, the average age for somebody directing something is a lot higher than these characters they portray. And, you know, for me...

I wanted to try to get going early. I had this instinct that I should try to, I got something to say now, if that makes sense. To be a voice of a generation. I wouldn't say all of that. To be a voice of a generation, like one of the voices. Yeah, yeah, one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, one of them, for sure. I wanted to contribute while I still was young. That was all. And I realized that I liked the movies by young filmmakers. I remember watching Mean Streets.

and saying, oh, yeah, this is a different Scorsese than Goodfellas or Departed. You know what I'm saying? It just feels like I can feel his youth. You know what I'm saying? Or do the right thing.

you know, versus Black Klansman. You know what I'm saying? Both great movies, but, like, it's a different spike. Movies made by young people are almost always really dynamic. They're youth and they're optimism and they're anger. It kind of infects the cinema. So I wanted to do that, you know? And it was like, damn, I could keep playing football and see how long this takes me. But I had a feeling that it would be a while if I kept pursuing ball, you know?

I thought I could play for a little bit more. I want to end asking you about Legacy because I heard there was a bidding war over centers and part of the deal was that you'd retain Final Cut and you'd get share of the theatrical opening and eventually own the film outright after 25 years, which I felt like...

That's such a boss move. Is that all right, first off? And why was it important for you? I mean, it's some truth that some of those articles, I haven't seen any that were totally accurate. But the thing is, is like what I'm, you know, those terms are not new terms. Like they're not unique. You know, I will say they are unique, but there are other filmmakers out there in the world

who have not made as much money as I have at the box office, who've had these terms for a long time. It's not that unique, you know, for me to have asked for these terms and for me to have received them, right? You know, I wrote the script on spec. My production company has made some really incredible movies in the past, you know, and there was no shortage of companies that wanted to work with us, thankfully. You know what I mean? Like, for me, the film was so personal,

and about my family. And, you know, 100 years ago, my family were sharecroppers. 100 years before that, they were in a different type of situation, if you catch what I'm saying. So for me, that was something that I stood on, you know, that my company stood on, you know. And I was so thrilled that Warner Brothers was comfortable with us standing on that and saw value in this project.

And I have to imagine there were some people that were upset about it. You know what I mean? Like...

Well, I feel like owning Sinners outright after 25 years, I mean, it is a long play. And I just wonder what you envision for this story over that kind of timeline. But is it something that you imagine expanding or revisiting or building upon in the future? I wouldn't rule anything out. But that was not the reason. Like, the reason for me was just this story that I wanted to—you listed the films that I've made before.

I made these movies when I was very young and they came at a steep price. I was not there when my uncle died because I was making a movie. I miss I miss so much, you know, making these movies before I was 40 years old. And they've done well over two billion dollars at the box office. You understand. And I will never own any of these movies. The next movie I make, Black Panther 3, I will not own that. Disney won't own that. You know, it was time for me to own this movie.

Ryan Coogler, this has been such a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much for this. And thank you for this film. Thank you for watching. And thank you for talking about it and bringing your brilliant expertise to it. I'm looking forward to folks hearing it. Ryan Coogler's new film Sinners is now in theaters. After a short break, Carolina Miranda reviews a new novel by Leila Lalami. This is Fresh Air.

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In her new novel, The Dream Hotel, author Leila Lalami plunges us into the story of a woman who is imprisoned solely on the basis that she might commit a crime. Lalami, who was born in Morocco and is now based in Los Angeles, won the American Book Award for her 2014 historical novel, The Moors Account. It was also a finalist for Pulitzer Prize.

Contributor Carolina Miranda reviews Lalami's novel and the disquieting ways it speaks to our text-saturated lives. Sarah Hussain hasn't committed a crime. But perhaps she was flagged because she dreamt about it, or because of the heated argument she'd had with a crackpot on social media. Or maybe it was the images of early 20th century Moroccan rebel fighters she'd been posting to the Internet.

Whatever the cause, Sarah now finds herself incarcerated in the California desert because an algorithm has determined she's an imminent risk. What exactly that risk may be and when and under what conditions she might be released is anybody's guess. This is the dystopian premise of Leila Lalami's gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel.

In this unsettling vision of the future, a company called DreamCloud makes brain implants that give insomniacs like Sarah a better night's rest while also harvesting valuable data from their dreams. The blandly titled Risk Assessment Administration assigns individuals a score that determines how likely a person might be to commit a violent crime, but how that score is calculated is confidential.

And the places where high-risk individuals are held for observation, called retention centers, are run by a private company called Safex that contracts out detainees as cheap labor to corporations. Into the crosshairs of these overlapping systems steps Sarah, a busy 30-something mother of twins who works as a museum archivist in Los Angeles.

She's in the process of returning from a conference in London when an elevated risk score, based partly on data taken from her dreams, gets her dinged for retention at LAX. The Dream Hotel has been compared to Philip K. Dick's 1956 science fiction novella, The Minority Report. That story imagined a society in which police arrest people for the crimes they have not yet committed based on data produced by a trio of humans with predictive powers.

But the minority report, with its snappy gumshoe dialogue, is told from the perspective of the police. Lalami instead sends us down the psychological rabbit hole of what it means to be incarcerated without due process in a world where your fate is decided by algorithms. The narrative is propulsive, but what makes the novel so absorbing are the ways the author makes this near-future world come to life.

Much of the story is presented as an omniscient third-person narrative, but in between, Lalamie inserts fragments of emails, corporate reports, and bits of a procedural manual, all of which give insight into the systems that keep people like Sarah indefinitely detained.

Ultimately, it is Sarah who is the beating heart of this remarkable story. And Lalami gives us a character that isn't simply an archetype, but a real human being full of ambition and ambivalence. Sarah is a scholar of post-colonial African history who works at the Getty Museum. She's also a woman who dwells on her insecurities and on petty annoyances, like the mundane squabbles she has with her husband.

Occasionally, she's betrayed by her own irritability. The novel credibly conveys her harrowing sense of disorientation as the wide world she once inhabited is reduced to a cell. Sarah's most relatable trait is the struggle she faces trying to contain the rage that she feels over her situation, rage that, if expressed, will only worsen her circumstances.

As the narrator tells us, compliance begins in the body. The trick is to hide any flicker of personality or hint of difference. It's a condition that isn't specific to her incarceration. As a woman of color, Sarah's of Moroccan descent, she's not the kind of person who is generally afforded the benefit of expressing anger. To inhabit Sarah's story is to hear the echoes of real people who are held in private immigration detention centers...

who have no legal recourse and no timeline for when they might get released. Her book also paints a grim picture about the ways in which our data can betray us. Lalami was inspired to write the novel after receiving a notification from her smartphone giving her the travel time to a yoga class, but she had never set such a reminder. Her phone was simply keeping track of her personal habits.

The Dream Hotel is a suspenseful novel. The book's simmering tension is whether Sarah will be able to find a way out of this trap. This ordinary woman who has plotted through life has to figure out how to undermine a system that has overtaken her mind and her body. Carolina Miranda reviewed The Dream Hotel by Leila Lalami. The Dream Hotel

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, journalist Paul Tuff on the mystery of ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. While millions of Americans have the diagnosis and are treated with stimulants, there is no scientific consensus about the biological roots of the condition and some medical concerns about common treatments. I hope you can join us. ♪♪

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