All American Boys
2015 · book
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 lookedlike 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's gotto 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