![]() As Amal serves out his sentence, he tries to write and paint his way out of the box, even as the box itself-and many of those trapped inside it with him-try to break him. That doesn’t save him from becoming the victim of an unjust, racist system that punishes him for it anyway. Amal admits to throwing the first punch, but he definitely didn’t throw the punch that put one of the white kids in a coma. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Amal and his friends got into a fight with a group of white kids at the basketball court in Amal’s gentrifying neighborhood. In Punching the Air, 16-year-old Amal Shahid finds himself slammed inside the cold, concrete box of a juvenile detention center after a false accusation.Īmal is a talented visual artist, an aspiring poet and rapper, a well-read scholar and a skilled skater, beloved by his Muslim family. The box presses down on the people it holds captive and tries to destroy what makes them unique, what makes them human, all in the interests of conformity, survival and the comfort of others. ![]() Once a person is trapped inside, the box’s hard lines and confines become their entire world. ![]()
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