Amal is a poet and an artist, but at his artsy New York City school he is sometimes seen as angry and disruptive. When he is unjustly accused of beating up a white teenager, the system labels him as a criminal and strips him of his humanity as well as his dreams of college. His heartbreaking story is beautifully told in verse and the details of his life and his part in the incident unfold slowly. Life in the juvenile detention center is brutal at times and the reader wants to scream with the injustice of it all. The authors perfectly capture how the justice system assumes that boys of color or older, more violent, and somehow hardened criminals for exhibiting what would be considered normal behavior by white boys. We see Amal's humanity in his grieving family, his poems, and the art he creates. We also see the system stacked against him in the racist tattoo of a prison guard. This book will find many readers among upper middle school and high school students and I was happy to hear that paperback copies are being made so it can be distributed in juvenile detention centers and prisons. The best books give voice to the voiceless, and that is what this book does. Side note: co-author Yusef Salaam is one of the "Exonerated Five" and while this is not autobiographical, he has lived much of this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment