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Punching the Air
Ibi Zoboi

Punching the Air

Balzer + Bray (2020)
9780063059306
| Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
386 pages | English

Genre

  • African-American
  • Coming of Age
  • Fiction
  • Young Adult Fiction

Subject

  • Racism

Plot

“The story that I thought was my life didn’t start on the day I was born.”

Amal has always been an artist and a poet. But even in his 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 escalated into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

Suddenly at just 16, 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?