Cover of Punching the Air

Punching the Air

by Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam

4.4
(47 ratings)
368 pages2020ISBN 9781799940395

About this book

The story that I thought was my life didn’t start on the day I was born Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. The story that I think will be my life starts today Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he 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? With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both. source: https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062996503/punching-the-air/

Publication Details

Published
2020
Pages
368
ISBN
9781799940395
Language
en

About Ibi Zoboi

Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times Bestselling author of MY LIFE AS AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH (Penguin, 2019), her middle grade debut, and the Young Adult novels PRIDE (HaperCollins, 2018) and AMERICAN STREET (HarperCollins, 2017), a National Book Award Finalist and recipient of five starred reviews. She is also the editor of BLACK ENOUGH: STORIES OF BEING YOUNG & BLACK IN AMERICA (HarperCollins, 2019). Ibi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. As an educator\, she is the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti. She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools. She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and their three children. ([source](http://ibizoboi.net/about)

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