Challenging Reads Book Club

This month, we are reading 'All American Boys' by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

Rashad is absent again today.

That is the sidewalk graffiti that started it all.

Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store and making him drop a bag of chips was what started it all. Because it did not matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he was not 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 looked like he was stealing. And he was a black kid in baggy clothes. So, he must have been stealing.

And that is how it started.

And that is what Quinn, a white kid, saw. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of a classmate. At first, Quinn does not tell a soul. He is 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 has got to understand it because, bystander or not, he is a part of history. He just has to figure out which side of history that will be.

Rashad and Quinn—one black and one white, but both American—face the unspeakable truth that racism and prejudice did not die after the civil rights movement. There is 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 world.

Because that is how it can end.

If you have any questions about this program, including accommodations, please contact Shannon at nwprograms@cc-pl.org. Please see all our program offerings in our online newsletter at cc-pl.org/connections.

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