Punching The Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

Seventeen-year-old Amal Shahid sits in the courtroom waiting to hear the jury's verdict after only a few hours of  deliberation.Amal is accused of beating up Jeremy Mathis, a white boy, "so bad the he can't wake up to tell the truth." While Amal may have thrown the first punch, he did not throw the last one. While the other three boys took a plea deal, Amal turned it down and pleaded not guilty.

At the trial there are many witnesses. Mrs. Rinaldi, Amal's art teacher tells the court she worked hard with him to "channel his anger into his art." There were witnesses from East Hill, the community on the other side of the tracks; a couple with a baby, a kindergarten teacher and a college student who recorded the incident.

Amal is found guilty of aggravated assault and battery and sentenced to juvenile detention. On the bus to the detention center Amal remembers the situation that got him where he is now; how his friend Omari who got him to go with him to the basketball courts for a two-on-two game and how he did not want to go because he didn't want to deal with the East Hill white boys. 

In jail, although Amal agrees to sign up for classes to work towards his high school diploma he becomes despondent and refuses to leave his cell. When he sees a special class on writing he is told he has to earn his way into it. Gradually, it is the support from his umi as well as a girl he likes, Zenobia Garrett and Amal's love of art that motivates him, gives him hope and transforms him. At the same time, things change on the legal front, offering Amal, hope and a second chance.

Discussion

Pushing The Air tackles a number of current issues related to race, the justice system and police brutality.  The issues of racial profiling, racial prejudice towards the black community, youth crime and the industrial prison system are especially important in light of recent police brutality and the shootings of American men of colour. For author Yusef Salaam, these issues are especially significant. Salaam experienced first hand the bias of the American justice system, when he along with four other black teens were falsely convicted of the aggravated assault and rape of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park in April, 1989. This happened despite the lack of any evidence connecting any of the "Central Park Five" to the crime, including critical DNA evidence.

Pushing The Air tells the story of seventeen-year-old Amal through the use of verse and rap. The authors employ the technique of telling a story within a story. The main narrative explores Amal's recent conviction and his struggle to survive in a juvenile detention center, while the secondary inner story highlights his struggles in school over the years as he deals with profound feelings of alienation. His sense of not belonging has resulted in Amal acting out; rebelling, fighting and not following rules in school. An example of his alienation is his experience as the only black student in Ms. Rinaldi's AP Art History class. The study of European art masters feels unrelatable to him,

"looking at slides of old paintings
and it was boring as f**ck
Muted and dull colors
Sad and pale rich white people
doing nothing but looking sad..."

Bored and frustrated, he pulls up his hoodie, disengages from the class, leading him to walk out and eventually fail the course. This consequence seems to stun Amal. Although Ms. Rinaldi probably tried in the only way she knew to help him, Amal feels she has never really "seen" him but sees only his paintings.

The main story however, is the injustice Amal encounters in the American judicial system beginning with his arrest, but also including his treatment by police, and the judicial system that assumes guilt based on skin colour or race. The other black teens who were arrested with Amal, all plead guilty and are sentenced to juvenile detention. While Amal admits to throwing the first punch, he knows he did not throw the last punches that sent Jeremy Mathis into a coma and so he refuses the plea deal and pleads not guilty.

Amal is angry that the people who truly know him were never called as witnesses. He states,

"Their words and what they thought
to be their truth
were like a scalpel

shaping me into
the monster
they want me to be

To the police, the witnesses and the court, black means something bad, white means something good. In the poem Blind Justice II, Amal states,

"We were
a mob
a gang
ghetto
a pack of wolves
animals
thugs
hoodlums
men

They were
kids
having fun
home
loved
supported
protected
full of potential
boys"

The white boys were seen as boys with a future, while Amal and his friends were seen as animals and were treated as such.To Amal and his friends, Lady Justice is not blind. She offers Jeremy Mathis the "American dream" and Amal Shahid jail or death. In the end,  the result is the same as those who pled guilty - a conviction and sentence to a juvenile detention center. It's like the facts and evidence do not matter.

Authors Zoboi and Salaam take readers through Amal's struggles in juvenile detention as he tries to come to terms with what has happened to him. The dehumanizing processing of those convicted is likened to the black slave trade. Amal compares being taken in hand cuffs and shackles to being chained on the slave ships. For example in the poem, Middle Passage, (the title a reference to the travelling of slave ships from Africa to America), the bus becomes the slave ship but with much more room,

"So this bus  this bus...
A ship headed for the new world
and we're all in here    in shackles
on our wrists         around our minds
                      around our hearts."

In juvenile detention, Amal struggles emotionally and psychologically. He must deal with new rules, mean guards and racial issues inside the center. Amal is left feeling confined and this lack of freedom makes him initially rebel. With the support of his family and friends, especially a girl he likes,  Amal gradually realizes he must change but he also hopes the world will change too. In solitary confinement Amal believes that his fighting, his "punching the air" was 

"... that maybe
I was punching
all the walls
they put up around me
around us." 

When he's given the opportunity to repaint a mural in the visitor's area, Amal takes it knowing 

"that this time
my punches will land on a wall
my punches will be paintbrushes"

His art may just be the way to break out of the box of alienation that others have built around him. And even though Amal's mural is whitewashed over, his art and his creativity bring him hope. 

Punching The Air offers readers the opportunity to consider the biases we all have that dehumanize another person and to work to change our world for the better. We all need to help one another and see others, no matter how different as a brother or sister. It is was the poem DNA II expressed: that when we lock our arms together, "in a circle arm in arm" when we are pushed, we don't stumble or fall. We all hold each other up and are unbreakable. This novel shows just how far we have to go and how much work needs to be done for that to be a reality.

Book Details:

Punching The Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
New York: Balzar + Bray      2020
386 pp.