Reviewed by Keesha Ceran
Review Source: Teaching for Change
Book Author: Kim Johnson
Kim Johnson’s This is My America is a beautiful book following the story of the Beaumont family and the protagonist, Tracy Beaumont. Tracy has made it her mission to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row, who as this book begins, has nine months to live. The book centers the complexity of a family navigating the injustice they have experienced and their persistence for justice, not just for James Beaumont (Tracy’s father), but also for Tracy’s older brother, Jamal, who as the story unfolds is accused of killing a white girl. Tracy must negotiate not only helping her father, whose time is running out, but also preventing Jamal from the same fate.
Johnson’s novel brings together these public, racialized moments that might be seen as compartmentalized. We often hear the story of an innocent individual on death row, but rarely hear the perspectives of their families and community. A novel that, while fiction, connects the contributions of Black Lives Matter activists, the work of the Equal Justice Initiative, Innocence Project, Know Your Rights, and more!
This book was hard to put down, reminding me of my younger days when I could read a few books in a day — this one I finished, off and on, in eight hours. I highly recommend this book for YA and adult readers and I am looking forward to reading Johnson’s next novel, Invisible Son.
Keesha Ceran is the associate director at Teaching for Change.
Also see this video Q & A with the author: Meet Kim Johnson, Author of THIS IS MY AMERICA
This Is My America by Kim Johnson
Published by Random House Children's Books on May 17, 2022
Genres: Incarceration, Young Adult
Pages: 416
Reading Level: High School
ISBN: 9780593118795
Review Source: Teaching for Change
Publisher's Synopsis: Every week, seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time — her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy's older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a "thug" on the run, accused of killing a white girl. Determined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive the uncovering of the skeletons of their Texas town's racist history that still haunt the present?
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