Punching the Air
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4.4 • 34 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Young-adult author Ibi Zoboi teams up with prison reform activist Yusef Salaam for this breathtaking story, written entirely in verse. Salaam is one of the Exonerated Five—New York teenagers wrongfully incarcerated for a violent crime they didn’t commit—and the duo channel his experiences into the fictional story of a 16-year-old named Amal, a budding artist who’s sent to juvenile detention after a violent confrontation. Amal’s story gives readers an up-close and scathing view of the criminal justice system’s bleak absurdity. At the same time, Punching the Air feels like a scrapbook of its hero’s life, constructed of vivid childhood memories, bursts of creative inspiration, and letters from a girl he likes. Honestly, we can’t think of a more relevant book to read with young people or a more poignant example of the power of poetry and art to help us make sense of the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zoboi (Pride) and Salaam (one of the Exonerated Five) together craft a powerful indictment of institutional racism and mass incarceration through the imagined experience of Amal, a Black, Muslim 16-year-old facing imprisonment. Amal, a gifted artist and poet attending a prestigious fine arts high school, has his life turned upside down when a nighttime park confrontation leaves a white kid from the other side "of that invisible line/ we weren't supposed to cross" in a coma, and Amal and his four friends on the hook for assault and battery they did not commit. Using free verse, Zoboi and Salaam experiment with style, structure, and repetition to portray "old soul" Amal's struggle to hold on to his humanity through the chaotic, often dehumanizing experience of juvenile incarceration. From the trial onward, the authors liken the pervasive imprisonment of Black bodies to the history of chattel slavery in America ("and this door leads to a slave ship/ and maybe jail"), and describe how educational racism feeds Black students into the school-to-prison pipeline ("I failed the class/ she failed me"). Zoboi and Salaam deliver an unfiltered perspective of the anti-Blackness upholding the U.S. criminal justice system through the eyes of a wrongly convicted Black boy ("shaping me into/ the monster/ they wanted me to be"). Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
Great perspective!
The point of view was told beautifully. Kept me engaged, and made me fall back into love with poetry!
Capitalism kills
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.