There are tiny moments like this that say absolutely everything and the result is an emotional punch to the gut. The worst of the violence and racism is alluded to but it is neatly and horrifically encapsulated in a description of a tattoo that one of the prison guards wears of a black baby with a noose around its neck. He's angry and humiliated and expecting everyone to be against him and of course many are. A white boy is beaten so badly he becomes comatose and Amal is caught, tried and convicted, protesting his innocence all the way.Īmal is traumatised and this is not an easy transition for him.
An almighty fight cracks off and Amal is involved. He's out with his mates one night and the white boys tell the black boys to get out of their neighbourhood. 'Boys just being boys' turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. But even in a diverse art school, hes seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. There has been a gentrification of the area in which Amal has grown up. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. Ms Rinaldi teaches by making him memorise paintings and dates and when Amal queries the relevance of old white painters it becomes clear that this system doesn't cater for a boy of his background. He's a clever kid who writes rhymes and gets into the extended art class but institutional racism is against him from the start. Punching the Air is not Yusef's autobiography but is inspired by his experience as a young artist and incarcerated black teen. Yusef Salaam was one of those boys, against whom there was no evidence.
The background to this young adult verse novel is that in 1989 five teens were arrested and convicted of rape and battery in what came to be known as The Central Park Jogger case. Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
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