I enjoyed the illustrations in the book, and there were a lot of impactful passages, but overall the book is very forgettable. But, the story didn’t really do much beyond that for me. It works brilliantly to share the story of wrongful incarceration and a young black man’s experiences behind bars. This is a young adult book, and although sometimes when reading YA I can’t clearly tell that it’s YA, that was not the case with this book. Punching the Air does not tell the story of the Exonerated 5, but the central narrative seems to be inspired by and based on Salaam’s experience in prison. The book is cowritten by contemporary author Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated 5 who were wrongfully incarcerated for the rape of a white woman. It’s a story about racism as well as finding your passion, that thing that gets you through each day, no matter how difficult the day. Punching the Air tells the story of a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. They also aren’t really marketed as a genre I’ve never seen a section in a bookstore dedicated to verse books, so whenever I stumble upon once I get excited. I read every book written in verse that I can find because most of the time I adore them.

Punching the Air book in front of a bookshelf “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet.

Yusef salaam punching the air