SIGN-UP: Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam International Blog Tour

Hi friends,

I am ecstatic to finally announce that I am organizing the international blog tour of Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, in partnership with HarperCollins International! And I am opening the sign-up form today. 😍

Please see further details below.

About the Book

Title: Punching the Air

Series: —

Author: Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam

Publisher: Balzer+Bray

Publishing Date: Sept. 1st 2020

Pages: 400

Age Category & Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Fiction, Poetry

Synopsis: From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

The story that I think

will be my life

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.

About the Authors

Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of Pride and My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, a New York Times bestseller, and Punching the Air with co-author and Exonerated Five member, Yusef Salaam. She is the editor of the anthology Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. Raised in New York City, she now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children.

Dr. Yusef Salaam was just fifteen years old when his life was upended after being wrongly convicted with four other boys in the “Central Park jogger” case. In 2002, after the young men spent years of their lives behind bars, their sentences were overturned. Now known as the Exonerated Five, their story has been documented in the award-winning film The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon and in Ava DuVernay’s highly acclaimed series When They See Us. Yusef is now a poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama, among other honors. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Sanovia, and their children. You can find him online at http://www.yusefspeaks.com.

About the Blog Tour

The Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam International Blog tour organized by yours truly, Karina @ Afire Pages, is in partnership with HarperCollins International and will be held from Aug. 30 to Sept. 4. The official blog tour hashtag is #PunchingtheAirBlogTour.

This blog tour will have 20 slots, is open to US-based and non-US based bloggers and will prioritize Black and/or Muslim book bloggers. All participants will be required to read and review the book. And eARCs will be provided by the publisher via Edelweiss.

Please be reminded that signing up does not guarantee you a spot on this tour. And all details provided will be treated with utmost confidentiality.

If you are interested in joining this blog tour, please fill-up the form here.

I personally believe in the importance of this story and the importance of what #OwnVoices reviewers have to say. If you are a Black and/or Muslim book blogger, I would love to have you on board! And if you know a Black and/or Muslim book blogger, sharing this to them would be highly appreciated.

THANK YOU! 💖