YA Co-Authors Who Tackled Racial Injustice Speak at Ensemble Theatre

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

Tue 10/2 @ 7PM

 “YA” or “young adult” fiction has been all the rage in recent years, even yielding up such successful movies as The Hunger Games and Twilight franchises. Most either have a fantasy/sci-fi twist as those two do, or deal with serious issues such as drug abuse and death. A long way from Anne Emery’s teen novels of the 50s such as Going Steady and Sorority Girl!

What’s unusual about the 2014 YA novel All American Boys, which falls in the “serious issues” category, is that it is written by two authors — one black, one white — and deals with headline issues such as racial profiling, police brutality and justice. In it, the black protagonist is mistaken for a shoplifter and beaten by a police officer; a white teenager witnesses the event and mulls over what action to take. It might see a bit “heavy” for younger readers, but in a world when 12-year-old Tamir Rice is killed for playing with a toy gun in a park, it’s clearly not.

The two authors, Jason Reynolds, who is black, and Brendan Kiely, who is white, were inspired by the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Trayvon Martin in Florida, to collaborate on All American Boys. They will share the stage at Ensemble Theatre in a program presented by the Cleveland Heights-University Heights public Library.

It’s free, but registration is required. Go here.

 

 

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