Yelling to the Sky, Punching the Air

~Punching The Air~
By Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam
Amazon ~ Powell's

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.


This was one of those that was all over my Facebook scroll, and between the cover art, the authors, and the plot, I knew I had to get ahold of this real quick. Obviously, I knew Ibi Zoboi from reading Pride a couple weeks back, but I was less familiar with Yusef Salaam outside of the Central Park Jogger case and was interested in getting to know more about him creatively. Let's just say, I got more than I bargained for.

I did not know this book was completely written in verse. I've read poetry books before, but not a story told through poetry before. (I assume this is kinda what the Ellen Hopkins books are like.) A lot of it reads just like stream of consciousness, which is mostly how I read through it, but some of it is visual, too. There's one poem called Mirror which is literally the same read top to bottom as bottom to top. I'm sure poetry scholars will be able to glean more from it than I can, but what I could glean was still powerful.

The story picks up during Amal's trial and follows him through sentencing, booking, and his time at a juvenile detention center. While I hesitated at first to mark a book about imprisonment with my tag The Black Experience, it did focus on Amal's differing treatment as a student, as a kid in his gentrifying neighborhood, and as a suspect/defendant in court. It especially takes a front seat in the poem Blind Justice II, which ends with the following:

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

Zoboi, Ibi & Yusef Salaam. Punching the Air (p. 202)

The majority of the book focuses on Amal inside the juvenile detention center, his treatment within, and his struggle to cope with his anger, depression, and hopelessness. Since there's not as much of a linear story to follow, it allows the thoughts and emotions of each topic to hit that much harder. I know I teared up more than once, and if I weren't reading at work would have had a good long cry after American Graffiti II. But as many heartbreaking moments there were, there were also uplifting ones, and the overall message (down to Amal's name) is of hope and perseverance. And that's never a bad message to get no matter who you are, especially right now.

One thing that didn't work for me was the formatting with illustrations. Along with his poetry (both in writing and occasionally spoken), Amal's main source of expression and therapy is his artwork, which is shared a little bit throughout the book. I'm sure the printed pages have some gorgeous depictions of the text with artwork, but in e-book form it became confusing at best and annoying at worst. Instead of, perhaps, having a page that is bordered by clouds or bullet holes, it's just text with a random smokey line following it. I don't know the best way to fix it, since formatting can vary so much with sizes of screens and fonts, but perhaps they should have dropped the more abstract art? Just for the e-book? I don't know.

Overall, this is a story I think everyone should have the chance to experience. While the e-book isn't the best at formatting the text with the artwork, I think it's still a fine vessel for the words and message overall, so maybe check it out but then buy the hard copy. The authors notes mention that, while the book is not Yusef's story outright, it does draw from his experiences as an incarcerated teen who used art to help himself through it, and that "this book is infused with some of the poetry Yusef wrote while he was incarcerated," which shouldn't mean much but, I don't know, kinda adds more credence to everything, even if it isn't non-fiction or autobiographical. If you ask me, schools should immediately switch out Robert Frost for Punching the Air, or just add it outright. And even outside of academia, this is definitely one you'll want to pick up and experience all the rage, sadness, brotherhood, and hope for yourself.