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. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. 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. The book is a beautifully rendered piece that delves into the disenfranchisement of young black men. It tells the story of a teenage boy Amal who has been wrongfully convicted of a crime.

“Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Punching the Air is a collaboration between award winning author Ibi Zoboi and Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. 1, 2020 Reviving a friendship that goes back almost 20 years, Zoboi writes with Exonerated Five member Salaam, exploring racial tensions, criminal injustice, and radical hope for a new day.

But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. PUNCHING THE AIR by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam RELEASE DATE: Sept. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.Īmal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. TW: Wrongful incarceration, use of the n word, School to prison pipeline, mass incarcerationįor fans of: Novels in Verse, Social Justice, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, YAįrom award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated.

Yusef salaam punching the air