All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Summary from Goodreads:

Rashad is absent again today.

That’s the sidewalk graffiti that started it all…

Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing—the cop just kept pounding him. Over and over, pummeling him into the pavement. So then Rashad, an ROTC kid with mad art skills, was absent again…and again…stuck in a hospital room. Why? Because it looked like he was stealing. And he was a black kid in baggy clothes. So he must have been stealing.

And that’s how it started.

And that’s what Quinn, a white kid, saw. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of a classmate. At first Quinn doesn’t tell a soul…He’s not even sure he understands it. And does it matter? The whole thing was caught on camera, anyway. But when the school—and nation—start to divide on what happens, blame spreads like wildfire fed by ugly words like “racism” and “police brutality.” Quinn realizes he’s got to understand it, because, bystander or not, he’s a part of history. He just has to figure out what side of history that will be.

Rashad and Quinn—one black, one white, both American—face the unspeakable truth that racism and prejudice didn’t die after the civil rights movement. There’s a future at stake, a future where no one else will have to be absent because of police brutality. They just have to risk everything to change the world.

Cuz that’s how it can end.

Review:

So, I’d been meaning to read this book for a long time. I love Jason Reynolds. I’ve heard him speak online and in person a few times now. And I recently listened to the audiobook of Stamped. A good librarian friend of mine recommended this book to me a long time ago. I don’t even remember buying it, but I got it signed at some point! It’s been showing up on a lot of booklists again lately, so I figured now was a good time.

Little did I know how right I was about how relevant it would be to read this right now. It came out in 2015, right in the middle of the Black Lives Matter Movement. But everything that transpired in it is so reminiscent of things that have transpired in the last few months. The media coverage, the commentary on sides, the violence, the protests, and the everything. I feel like I couldn’t have read this at a better time.

I wasn’t expecting to read this in one day. But, how can you put a story like this down? And how can you not want an ending to this story? To all the stories? The book pretty much grabs you on page one with a brief poem on a grey page, about a boy being beaten on the pavement. How can this not make me think of George Floyd? Of countless others? From page one of this book, I’m hooked and it’s just a short poem about the pavement.

From there, I really liked getting two sides of the coin. You get the black story and the white story. It was interesting to see both how Rashad changed and grew as the book went on and how Quinn did. Quinn’s changes were more obvious. He grew to see his privilege. He goes from defending the officer that he knows, to switching sides entirely and what a journey to watch! Oh, how I wish more people in this country could go on this journey with him. Maybe I’m being too critical, but some of his changes (and that of the girl he’s interested in) seem almost too good to be true. Words they use seem almost too perfect.

But, Rashad changes too. He learns that not everything is so concretely good or bad. And that his parents can’t so easily fall into one category or the other. He learns to be brave and strong –he has to overcome the terrible atrocity that has been done to him. I cried for and with Rashad. And I loved watching his art grow and change too.

Everything in this book was done well from the graffiti, to the family drama, to the friendships. It all felt real to me. It all felt like something that very plausibly could have happened 6 years ago or 6 days ago. I feel like this book doesn’t have nearly as much hype as it deserves. I give it a 9/10.