In a way, the collaboration between Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam began more than 20 years ago, when they met at Hunter College in 1999. Zoboi wanted to interview Salaam for the campus newspaper. A member of what is now known as the Exonerated Five, he had recently been released from a seven-year incarceration for a crime he did not commit. However, Zoboi soon realized, “he just wasn’t ready to tell his story.”
The two ran into each other three years ago, while she was promoting her National Book Award finalist novel “American Street” and he was selling a self-published poetry book. As Salaam put it, “everything was right on time.” Added Zoboi, “we just decided that his story needed to get to young readers.”
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The result of their collaboration is “Punching the Air,” a young adult novel in verse that follows Amal, a young man who, like Salaam, finds himself wrongfully imprisoned at age 16. “The character came first,” Zoboi said. “The fact that Yusef is so incredibly self-aware and spiritual and deeply immersed in trying to express himself through visual art and poetry — and that’s who he was as a 16-year-old — I wanted to tell the story of this particular 16-year-old boy, because I don’t see him reflected in the media. And we wanted to tell the story of a child, first and foremost.”
For Salaam, who as a child dreamed of hip-hop stardom, art became a way to meditate during imprisonment. “Sometimes the poems would come, I would be walking down the corridor and all of a sudden I would feel like I was a vessel with words coming through,” he said. “I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to talk about my humanity. I was waking up to the American nightmare.”
Those poems, the authors said, became the backbone of the novel. Working together to bring it to fruition, Salaam added, “was such a beautiful process. I may be the rapper, but Ibi is the DJ. She’s the one making sure the music is playing and it’s right on cue.”
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Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at kate.tuttle@gmail.com.
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