Punching the Air

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Verse can do what prose cannot. I cannot imagine a book as powerful as Punching the Air being written in prose. It is stark and vivid, detailed and hard-hitting all at the same time.

Amal was just sixteen when he was convicted of a crime he did not commit. Even though the protagonist Amal isn’t identical to the author Dr Yusef Salaam, what he goes through is based on the latter’s incarceration. Yusef Salaam came, eventually, to be known as one of the exonerated five. Together with Ibi Zoboi, he crafts an unputdownable story that left me both angry and hopeful.

Amal means ‘hope’, but when he is in prison for no reason except the colour of his skin, it is hard to hold on to hope. Every emotion rages through the story, and the way the writers play with format, word choice and alignment made the story all the more impactful. Amal oscillates between hope and desperation, bursts of creative energy and desolation at the pointlessness of it all. Every one of these emotions comes through the pages. From the injustice of the system to the very white canon that every student must study, Punching the Air touches upon so much through the lens of hope. It is pacy, thoughtful and brilliantly crafted, leaving the reader with a jumble of emotions and a need for a more transparent, just world.