This Is My America

Dear Martin meets Just Mercy in this unflinching yet uplifting YA novel that explores the racist injustices in the American justice system.

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?

Rating:

Many thanks to Rockstar Book Tours and Random House Books for Young Readers for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review and for inclusion on this blog tour. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

Not gonna lie, I had some misgivings going into this, because contemporary tends to be a real hit-or-miss genre for me. I wanted to love this book so much, but it felt a bit like a “social justice” type book, and I tend to not like the preachiness of issues books in general. Boy was I wrong.

This Is My America is a hard, honest look at what it’s like to be Black in America. It pulls the reader into a close-knit, loving family hurt by a broken system, but one that never gives up hope for the future.

I got such whiplash reading this book, because there were so many parts that just absolutely broke my feels, but at the same time, there were so many hopeful and sweet parts. Even though this is a dark topic, this isn’t necessarily a dark book. Yes, by necessity, there are dark moments, but the message is of moving forward and growing and doing better, and I loved that.

I absolutely loved Tracy’s character, because she never stops fighting for the people she loves.

It feels so weird for me to love a character that isn’t, like, Stabby McMurderPants. I’m not sure what’s come over me. Still, Tracy is super fierce in her own right. She refuses to give up, so she does the only thing she knows how to do: keeps pushing for justice. Which, obviously, is such an easy motive to get behind, because on the surface, who would say, no, we don’t want justice?!

Tracy’s persistence is one of the things I loved about her, because in the face of a world that wants to hold her down, she fights back in whatever small ways she can.

She holds local Know Your Rights meetings to help her community understand how to interact with police. She keeps writing fervent letters to Innocent X, despite never getting a response, because she believes in her father’s innocence. It was just so easy to root for her.

There are so many tough, real scenarios called out in this book, from microaggressions to blatant racism to the way cliques form around racial lines … and this is before we factor in any sort of police/prison plot.

As a Black person myself, I can 100% confirm microaggressions are a thing, and sometimes they’re the most insidious form of hate. Even if people don’t consciously know what they’re saying. When someone is overtly racist in a big way, it’s easy to brush that off, because it’s just someone acting a fool, like they do. But microaggressions are built into the structure of society, and they’re things you’re told from a young age about where you fit, who you are, and who you’ll inevitably be. They’re small lies that constantly beat against you until they finally wear you down into believing some aspect of them.

Tracy is just trying to live her best life in a majority-white town that’s never really wanted her there, and there are so many little reminders of that.

Right down to the way her friendship with Dean is questioned and strained because he’s white and she’s Black. It’s assumed that of course they could never be more than friends because of the race issue. As a Black woman who married a white man, that breaks my heart that even as young as they are, the world is telling them it can’t happen.

I don’t even know what to say about this plot. It made me Hulk levels of angry for these characters.

The way it’s set up, your first thought is this couldn’t really happen, right? Because there is literally no case against the accused. None. Yet, if you actually dig into the history of court cases, this is more common than you’d think. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is a naive fallacy, and often, minorities aren’t given the benefit of doubt to start with.

The basic premise is Tracy’s father was convicted with a death sentence and shoddy evidence, the other Black man accused killed, and in the shadow of trying to get this sentence overturned, the cycle seems to be repeating itself with her brother, Jamal.

Because as if the first isn’t bad enough, you get to see the second happen in real time and watch the investigation get botched, and it’s just … ugh. This shouldn’t be a thing in this day and age, and it is. I actually really enjoyed the mystery of this. I thought for sure I had the case solved and figured out the guilty party, and I was wrong. I mean, the whole book is about not making snap judgments about people, and I totally did that when assuming who the guilty party was, so well done, Johnson, for totally catching me on that.

Despite all the dark themes, there are some really uplifting ones, as well, about coming together as a community and family bonds and trying to do better.

The family bonds are super strong in this, and I absolutely loved it. It’s easy to fall apart when you’re being persecuted by the community, but that’s not the case. The Beaumonts just get stronger with every adversity they have to face together, and as the book keeps going, they pull in the people around them, too, until there’s this really sweet connection between so many different characters as they fight for the truth.

It’s such a bold choice for Johnson to leave the book on a positive note, but I loved that she did, while, at the same time, acknowledging that the struggle doesn’t necessarily just “end” for Tracy.

This book raises some really hard realities about life as a Black American.

I’m not going to say everyone’s experience is like this, because that would be a lie. The truth, though, is that most Black Americans have experienced some part of Tracy’s story, even if it’s “just” microaggressions. Heck, when hubby and I moved into our small, majority-white town, there was a black couple that was chased out a couple months later with bricks through their windows and “n***er” written on their house/vehicles. Have we had issues with any of that? No. But as hubby likes to say, we both have “resting murder face,” and I’m more visible in the community, so it’s not like someone could mess with me without ramifications. I recognize that that’s a luxury I have and others don’t, though.

If you’re not Black and you want a perspective on what it’s like to be Black in America, this is a good place to start, and it might really open someone’s eyes about how even the “little” things can add up and mean a lot. Especially to a teenager.

Teenagers are in such a tumultuous time in their lives already as they try to figure themselves out. Throwing race into the mix just makes things harder. Unfortunately, that’s an inescapable reality for minorities.

What I especially liked, though, is that the book offers some small things you can do to make things better, without sounding preachy. There are some small tips snuck in about dealing with police that will serve a reader just as well as it does the characters (hopefully, at least), and it fits nicely in the book without feeling awkward and specifically “for” the reader. The author’s note also offers a lot of resources for further research or where to find more information on certain topics.

About Kim Johnson

KIM JOHNSON held leadership positions in social justice organizations as a teen and in college. She’s now a college administrator who maintains civic engagement throughout the community while also mentoring Black student activists and leaders. She is also the graduate advisor and member of an historically Black sorority. This Is My America is her debut novel and explores racial injustice against innocent Black men who are criminally sentenced and the families left behind to pick up the pieces. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Maryland, College Park.

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3 winners will receive a finished copy of THIS IS MY AMERICA.
US Only.

✦ Week One ✦
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