All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

As my month of reading books that have been banned (or probably will be soon) was coming to an end, I picked All American Boys up off my shelf. It's fairly new, so I don't think it's had a chance to stir up much controversy yet. However, it's liberal use of profanity and controversial topic of police brutality will surely ruffle some feathers eventually.

The story is told from the points of view of two high school boys, and the perspective alternates throughout the novel. The first boy, Rashad, is an African American JROTC student. He makes decent grades and keeps himself out of trouble. His father, a former member of the military and retired police officer sees to it that he keeps himself on the straight and narrow. As the novel opens, it's a normal Friday afternoon and he is fooling around with his friends. On his way to a party, he stops off at a corner store to pick up some snacks, and that's when the world as he knows it changes forever. A white lady accidentally trips over him, and a nearby police officer assumes that she stumbled because Rashad was trying to steal something from her. Instantly, he handcuffs Rashad, takes him outside, and beats him so badly that his ribs and nose are broken and he has internal bleeding.

Someone captures the incident on their cell phone and soon, Rashad's story is national news. Tensions rise in his community, with some people taking his side and others defending the police officer, who they say was "just doing his job." Caught in the middle of this injustice, Rashad must find a way to move forward with his life and take a stand for what is right. He knows he is lucky to have survived his encounter with the police. He also knows that many other African Americans who were in similar situations were not. Although he is scared and hurt, he knows that he must use his story to help bring change to his community, and the country at large.

The other half of the story is told from the point of view of Quinn, a white student who is a basketball star at the school both he and Rashad attend. He doesn't really know Rashad, aside from seeing him around the hallways, but he becomes connected to his story when he witnesses him being beaten outside the corner shop. He is immediately conflicted about what he sees. He doesn't know if Rashad was guilty of anything (he wasn't inside the store), but he sees that the beating was brutal and beyond what was necessary. To make things even more confusing, he knows the police officer doing the beating personally - he is the older brother of his best friend. He can't reconcile the kind, caring person he knows with the seemingly mindless brutality he witnesses.

Things start to become difficult for Quinn at school as a result of this. With tensions running high, he is expected, as a white kid, to be on the side of the police officer, and by extension, his best friend. It would be easy for him to align himself with the other white students and remain outside of the situation, but what he witnessed eats away at him so deeply that he is driven to speak out and support Rashad. He comes to realize that he is an inheritor of a broken system that favors people like him, as and such, he has a responsibility to help fix it, despite any personal costs he encounters.

This novel was, to put it simply, incredible. It spoke about racism and the police in unflinching terms, and had enough statistics and facts sprinkled throughout the narrative to lend weight to the plot and tie the events of the novel to reality. Both Rashad and Quinn were distinctive and well-developed characters. As a reader, I understood where both were coming from and cared about how things turned out for them.

It was a very effective strategy to examine the story from the perspective of an African American and a white person. I think it was especially illuminating to watch Quinn's journey. It can be very difficult for a white person to acknowledge institutional racism, both because it can be difficult to understand for someone that it doesn't affect and because they quietly benefit from it in ways they might not be fully conscious of. It's much easier to remain silent about incidents that might seem a little bit off or to buy into racial stereotypes and let the police off the hook. Watching Quinn come to understand the situation and stand up for Rashad was beautiful.

All American Boys is a huge literary achievement and honestly, it should be required reading for students today. I love it when young adult fiction tackles socially relevant topics. I think that if our world is going to change the way it thinks, books like this will be the catalyst.

I'm tired. I'm tired of hearing about unarmed black men and women being killed by the police for no good reason. I'm tired of seeing the small percentage of black students at our school earning almost all of our behavior referrals. I'm tired of hearing my coworkers speak ignorantly about topics they don't remotely understand. I'm tired of biting my tongue to avoid offending white people. I'm tired of people assuming that because I am white, that I agree with their racist viewpoints. Most of all, I'm tired of waiting and tiptoeing around people and pretending to respect their ignorance. Racism is alive and well in this country in ways that are sneaky and vile and we NEED to talk about it. We need to make serious changes in the ways we think and act. This book is a wonderful bridge towards beginning to understand some of these issues.