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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2020, 400 pages
Paperback:
Dec 2021, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Lisa Bintrim
Buy This Book
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
The story that I thought
was my life
didn't start on the day
I was born
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white.
The story that I think
will be my life
starts today
Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.
Part I
Birth
Umi gave birth to me
at home
She has a video
and every birthday
she makes me watch
When I was little
I would run away
Umi would laugh and say
Come here, boy
You gotta remember
where you came from!
She'd chase me around
that small apartment
and I'd cover my eyes and
pretend to be gagging
That's nasty, Mama, I'd say
That's life, Amal
You have to respect it
she'd say
Umi was in this inflatable pool
in the middle of our living room
with the midwife next to her
My father was holding the camera
She was taking deep fire breaths
eyes closed tight, not even screaming
almost praying
Then the midwife plunged
both her hands into the pool
And then
there I was rising out of water
Squirming little brown thing
barely crying
big eyes wide
as if I'd already done this before
as if I'd already been here before
Umi says
I was born with an
old, old soul
Old Soul
The thing about being born
with an old soul
is that
an old soul can't tell you
all the ...
The book's messaging around systemic racism and structural violence can be heavy-handed, relying on clunky exposition and stock characters rather than trusting Amal and the reader to gradually awaken to a greater awareness of these issues through the story. The writing, however, can be captivating and powerful, especially when it lets the reader into Amal's interior life. Spare and straightforward verse gives way to vibrant, rhythmic bursts when he spits his rhymes. He is a wonderfully complex main character — neither sinner nor saint, sheltered yet aware, still a boy but not a child — and an important counter to the stereotypes of Black teenage boys that saturate the media...continued
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(Reviewed by Lisa Bintrim).
Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author
Punching the Air is the profound sound of humanity in verse. About a boy who uses his creative mind to overcome the creativity of racism. About a boy who uses the freedom of art to overcome his incarceration. About you. About me. Utterly indispensable. Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning, bestselling author of Brown Girl Dreaming
In this beautifully rendered book, we are reminded again of how brilliant and precarious our Black Lives are and how art can ultimately heal us. Jason Reynolds, award-winning, bestselling author of Long Way Down
Stories, at their best, will break something old in you or build something new. Remarkably, Punching the Air does both. Zoboi and Salaam have created nothing short of a masterwork of humanity, with lyrical arms big enough to cradle the oppressed, and metaphoric teeth sharp enough to chomp on the bitter bones of racism. This is more than a story. This is a necessary exploration of anger, and a radical reflection of love, which ultimately makes for an honest depiction of what it means to be young and Black in America.
On the night of April 19, 1989, several dozen teen boys went into New York City's Central Park as a loose group. Early on the morning of April 20, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker, was found in the park; she had been raped and badly beaten. She remained in a coma for two weeks and retained no memory of the attack.
Amid media outcry over Meili's attack and under pressure to solve the case, the police linked the two events, and soon arrested five of the boys who had been at the park that night: Antron McCray (15), Kevin Richardson (15), Yusef Salaam (15), Raymond Santana (14) and Korey Wise (16). Dubbed the "Central Park Five" by the media, the boys, all Black or Latino, were subjected to hours of intense ...
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