I Am Alfonso Jones

 

I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina  167 pp.

In a fictional story that could have been ripped right from the evening news, a black teenager is gunned down by an off-duty policeman while shopping for a suit because someone thought the hanger in his hand was a gun. Alfonso Jones is a gifted teenager, a musician, an honor student at an exclusive school, and a bike messenger who has been saving up his money. In one inexplicable moment he is shot dead and finds himself boarding a train full of other victims of police violence. The train takes Alfonso on a tour of other killings as well as seeing the aftermath of his own death. The black and white illustrations of this graphic novel convey the darkness, heartbreak, anger, and injustice of the repeated killings. 

The Impossible Knife of Memory

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson  391 pp.

Hayley Kincaid has been living on the road with her trucker father Andy since his return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Andy suffers from severe and worsening PTSD and hopes that moving back to their hometown will help while allowing home schooled (truck schooled?) Hayley to attend a "real" school her senior year. Hayley hates the school and is a constant state of worry about her father. She also is beginning to recover memories of her own childhood that she had repressed for years, her own form of PTSD. The reluctant and resistant Hayley ends up in a relationship with Finn who is dealing with his own family issues. Things with Andy come to a head after the death of Roy, an old army buddy who is still serving. The dramatic denouement provides a cautiously hopeful ending to this riveting story.

All American Boys

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely 316 pp.

Sixteen year old Rashad Butler is a good student, an artist, and a member of JrROTC (his father's orders). Rashad stops at a corner store to pick up chips and suddenly finds himself accused of a crime and brutally beaten by a police officer. Quinn Collins is a fellow student and a star basketball player who witnesses the beating by the officer who has been his mentor since the death of Quinn's father in Afghanistan. While Rashad recovers in the hospital the high school and the town start to take up sides mostly along racial lines. Quinn is directly impacted as the basketball team divides into factions between Rashad's friends and the friends of the officer's younger brother. Quinn is caught in the middle having witnessed the beating but having the close connection to the cop involved. There is clearly more than two sides to the story and those involved begin to realize that. The section where the students read aloud from Ellison's Invisible Man was serendipitous since we just finished the summer read of that book. This novel is one of the selections we are reading in the Great Stories Grant book club. It is a hard hitting story that I had to read in sections then step away from because of the subject matter and its resemblance to events in Ferguson in 2014.

The Parking Lot Attendant

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat, 225 pages.

Told from the viewpoint of a 16 year-old, unnamed Ethiopian-American girl, living in Boston with her father (well, for most of the story, anyway), This story is strange, compelling and beautifully odd. The narrator has lived with her mother and with her father, but never with both at the same time. As the story opens, she hasn't seen or heard from her mother in the last several years, and her relationship with her father is very strained. One day after school, upon hearing Amharic spoken at a local restaurant, she becomes acquainted with Ayale, the man described in the book's title. Besides the parking lot, Ayale tends to many other hidden enterprises, dispenses favors, delivers odd packages and argues with the narrator's father.
Tamirat writes beautifully and keeps the plot twisting enough so that everyone, reader and character alike of off-balance and a little confused.