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Review: All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Updated: Dec 22, 2020

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’sgotto 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.


"Rashad is absent again today."

Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (5)


All American Boys is awfully relevant.

Reading this book gave me chills. It should give me chills.

What is currently happening (and has been happenening for centuries) has to stop.

Rashad may be a fictional character, but his story is so relevant, that it could've easily been a true story.


"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

All American Boys follows two teenage boys who go to the same school. One POV is of Rashad Butler, a Black boy. The other POV is of Quinn Collins, a White boy.

Two different stories.

I personally really liked the two POVs. How Quinn starts the book being ignorant. Saying the things we hear a lot of White people say. But throughout the rest of the book you see how he, despite what his close ones tell him, re-evaluates what his standpoint is.


All Black Lives Matter.


"Our silence is another kind of violence."

Police brutality is still happening in the world. Especially in the United States. If you want to donate, sign petitions or find more resources, please go to this link. The carrd that I linked to is updates regularly.

Also, amplify Black voice today, tomorrow, always.

 

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