Punching the Air - Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam

Punching the Air

By Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam

  • Release Date: 2020-09-01
  • Genre: Coming of Age Fiction for Young Adults
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 34 Ratings

Description

New York Times and USA Today bestseller * Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor * Walter Award Winner * Goodreads Finalist for Best Teen Book of the Year * Time Magazine Best Book of the Year * Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

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. A must-read 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, because of a biased system he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated. 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 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.

Reviews

  • Capitalism kills

    5
    By Monroe Lola
    Starting to read this after I don’t want to take take my husband for nine years and put him in prison after seeing him the same for 35 years or get 99 as a black man they let him die with no treatment. I’m so angry and hurt at the same time that The truth is so many Black people hear America will chase catalyst hottest dream right in to prison system. No black activist in the USA whole ever have not been a communist & now it’s essentially the oppressed with the same “capitalism” heart as the oppressed thinking really that striving for anything different than you do it they’re doing. and I’m angry and hurt and I feel your pain & anger: Basic economics 101 capitalism has an automatic side effect of sexism racism and poverty you can’t have them bring the other and it’s like I can’t run into anybody who has the heart of this American dream that has to be better than the next and step over them because I can’t even get people to a black homeschool or black neighborhoods but the sign up for 99 your presence and sister impress each other and I’m The white wife who used to tell my black husband that he was going to end up in prison or dead if he kept playing with these white folks because you can’t trust or be friends w someone who is not a communist but I feel as alone as ever in a country with everyone that has the same values black or white… I swear I’m to the point of grabbing my children and heading to communist wakanda. There are no black panthers or the weatherman in America that there were 30 years ago and it’s sad to say we could hardly find respecting and today they’re really just lining up well and going to the prison to stop on each other’s spirit.