It’s poetry disguised in life. All American Boys is a fantastic young adult novel that gives a definite perspective of police cruelty and unfair justice from the perspectives of two high school classmates at JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps):Rashad, who is brutally assaulted by a policemen who inaccurately surmised him of shoplifting a bag of chips and assaulting a white women looking at wine, and Quinn, who witnesses the act and initially avoids the situation to not get involved with what he knows is truly wrong. This novel is an outstanding realistic fiction, that gives the reader a prominent perspective on the ongoing problem in our society today.
Co-authors: Brendan Kiely (white) and Jason Reynolds (African-American) chose this topic out of pure anger and frustration directly towards the African-American’s discrimination and inability to plainly live such as Michael Brown. Conversation between these two joint authors really started when Michael Brown was killed on August 9, 2014. These authors both described this situation as being the “final straw” in their ongoing discussion about this topic and encouraged them to work together and write a novel that states this predicament with meaning and purpose.
In result, the multi-perspective narrative about racial problems and police savagery causes Rashad to be a rallying cry amongst the community opposed to police cruelty. After Rashad's beating, captured by video cameras and cellphones, the videos extended out to social media blowing up the situation, creating opinions on both sides throughout each viewer . Rashad was also hospitalized with a broken nose, multiple broken ribs and internal bleeding around his lungs all due to impact. When he came back to senses he was dismayed to seek himself at the center of attention, attention that he really didn’t want. Advocates around the community including his high school, used graffiti, which really isn’t graffiti but a public statement to show their support for him with the phrase “Rashad Is Absent Again Today.”
In the meantime, Quinn internally fights with what he has seen. The whole situation is really not in Quinn's favor, because the police officer who beat Rashad turns out to be a really close family friend and is his best friend’s older brother. He cannot accept the fact that a man he is so close to would beat someone like that unless the individual truly earned it. The whole situation for Quinn is really traumatizing and he really wants it to just go away. In the long run Quinn is the one who holds this story in his hands and he has to make a big decision between possibly losing friends and scholarship opportunities or accepting the truth and being loyal and honest to save the hearts of All American Boys.
“The fear. I was making leaps in my mind now, but once I’d hung on that word “fear,” I remembered the time I was a freshman and I saw a senior walking down the hall. He was black, and I didn’t know his name, but he was wearing a Public Enemy T-shirt: Fear of a Black Planet-the bull’s eye logo poised to eclipse the Earth. Fear. The T-shirt was right. Like when Mrs. Cambi talked about our neighborhood now. Fear. Like the way Ma told me to cross the street to the other side of the sidewalk if I was walking home alone and I saw a group of guys walking towards me. Guys. That wasn’t the word she used. Thugs. Fear of thugs. Just like what some people were saying on the news. Rashad looked like a thug”(132).
This quote by Quinn, most likely describes one of the more perplexing questions there is today. What is fear? This question can go endless ways; individuals, groups, perspectives, opinions, etc. This question is often varied throughout culture and communities but can be very influencing as a whole. My question is, if you witness something that you, personally, don’t agree with, are you going to take the sidelines and not engage with what’s going on or are you going to make it personal and have an effect on not just your community, but everyone's?