All American Boys - Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Rashad is absent again today.

That’s the sidewalk graffiti that started it all…

Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t 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’s how it started.

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

Rashad and Quinn—one black, one white, both American—face the unspeakable truth that racism and prejudice didn’t die after the civil rights movement. There’s 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.

Cuz that’s how it can end. "

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu

I wish this book wasn't so necessary, but god damn. It might as well be non-fiction. Rashad stops by the corner store on a Friday after school to get a bag of chips. When he bends down to get his cell phone out of his bag, a woman trips over him. When the shop owner and a police officer see a bag of chips fly out of his hands, they assume he was shoplifting, so naturally the police officer cuffs him and then proceeds to beat the shit out of him, landing the teenaage ROTC student in the hospital with broken ribs, a broken nose, and internal bleeding.

Quinn is waiting outside the corner store to score some beer for a party when he sees his best friend's older brother, a police officer, beating a black teenage boy outside the store. At first, Quinn can't come to terms with what he's just witnessed. Paul has been like a father to him since his own father died, and he wants to believe there was a reason for what went down. But what reason can there be that would explain what he saw? As much as he wants to support his best friend's family, Quinn has some difficult decisions to make about what he believes and what kind of person he wants to be.

This book might make you cry. Honestly, it probably should, for all the people who are #absentagaintoday.