Co-authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely had written young-adult books separately for publisher Simon and Schuster when they were asked to go on a group tour of male authors. The two, both New Yorkers, ended up sharing a room, and while they were on the road, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin.
Reynolds, who is African American, remembers what it was like being on tour at that time. “I’m angry and I’m frustrated and I’m sort of wrought with emotion — and I’m traveling and living with a stranger,” he says. A white stranger at that.
They got to talking about it all, and it turned out Kiely was experiencing similar feelings. “He was as frustrated as angry and as confused as I was,” says Reynolds. They talked themselves into a genuine friendship, where race was often a topic of conversation.”
Bates, Karen Grigsby. “’All American Boys’: A Young Adult Book About A Police Beating And A Hard Choice.” NPR, NPR, 25 Nov. 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/11/25/457168819/all-american-boys-a-young-adult-book-about-a-police-beating-and-a-hard-choice.
I thought this article was very helpful in that it provides some insight on the inspiration of this novel and how the two authors met, how they got along, and their perspectives over controversial topics, such as those that surround this novel.
“ Oh my God! He was right over there!
Closer than I’d been to him when Paul
laid into him. Much closer. And Rashad
was looking at me too.”
“I locked eyes with a kid I didn’t know,
but felt like I did. A white guy, who I could tell
was thinking about those names too.”
“All I wanted to do was see the guy
I hadn’t seen one week earlier. The
guy beneath all the bullshit too many
of us see first- especially white guys
like me who just haven’t worked hard
enough to look behind it all.”
“Those people. I hadn’t known any of them,
and probably hadn’t either. But I was connected
to those names, now because of what
happened to me. We all were. I was sad.
I was angry. But I was also proud. Proud to be there.
Proud that I could represent Darnell Shackleford.
Proud that I could represent Mrs. Fitzgerald
– her brother who was beaten in Selma.”
“I wanted him to know that I saw him,
a guy who, even with a tear-streaked
face, seemed to have two tiny smiles
framing his eyes like parentheses, a
guy on the ground pantomiming his death
to remind the world he was alive.”
“For all the people who came before us,
fighting this fight, I was here,
screaming at the top of my lungs.
Rashad Butler.
Present.”
The last page of this novel is a pretty clear connection to the article above now that the reader knows how the two authors met, these two characters now meet under similar circumstances and come together for a common cause, metaphorically and physically.
All american blog 