Like our lwas.”, “We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. His legs were stretched straight out in a V on either side of the roof’s ridge. In this stunning debut novel, Pushcart-nominated author Ibi Zoboi draws on her own experience as a young Haitian immigrant, infusing this lyrical exploration of America with magical realism and vodou culture. Luca’s head is beneath his mami’s chin, her body knotted tightly around him. But with our burdens.”, “...as long as you have a bougie heart, you can aim for the finer things in life.”, “But then I realize that everyone is climbing their own mountain here in America. A day shy of his seventeenth birthday, Musa was a boy with the survival instincts of a grown man. “If hot red is for anger and rage, pink is the color of a soft burning – hot enough to light up the dark corners of sadness and grief, but cool enough to be tender, innocent, open.”, “So trying to come to America from the wrong country is a crime?”, “Don't give me no 'but you're beautiful on the inside' bullshit. They are tall and mighty and they live in the hearts and everyday lives of the people.”, “We have to become everything that we want. The fatherland in whose name — and for whose benefit — the predation continued was no longer a physical fatherland but a spiritual one: the American Self. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.”, “When you remember all the ways you been killed, and how that shit hurt your fucking soul, ain’t no way in hell you could shake that off. The door of the bathroom remains open, which worries Luca, though he can’t see it beyond the shield of his mother’s body, behind the half-barricade of his abuela’s shower wall. Punching the air / written by Ibi Zoboi with Yusef Salaam ; illustrations by Omar T. Pasha. I’m not a citizen. Not with our bags. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group. Someone shoots the radio, and then there’s laughter. When the moment arrived, he would place the pad of his right index finger on the trigger, rather than the crease between the first and second joints. Now he was one of the best marksmen among his peers. That could result in a sideways torque on squeezing the trigger. But these multitudes will not be my own. The hallway that ends at the door of this bathroom is carpeted. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream? Let the words slide out and don’t be so uptight about it. Luca touches the cut on his lip. They don’t move after the man leaves. Luca feels unmoored from the boundaries of time that have always existed. In this stunning debut novel, Pushcart-nominated author Ibi Zoboi draws on her own experience as a young Haitian immigrant, infusing this lyrical exploration of America with magical realism and vodou culture. He could be a street vendor, a luggage porter at a lorry park, a shoeshine boy, or a truck-pusher – one of those guys who roam Accra with a cart picking up metal scraps to take to the junkyards. In her words was the power of a great negation, a corrective to a tradition of endless American self-congratulation. The information below is included in your interlibrary loan request. Luca feels her breath snag in her chest. Mami does not breathe. I wouldn't see it until our private lives had consumed the public space, then been codified, foreclosed, and put up for auction; until the devices that enslave our minds had filled us with the toxic flotsam of a culture no longer worthy of the name; until the bright pliancy of human sentience — attention itself — had become the world's most prized commodity, the very movements of our minds transformed into streams of unceasing revenue for someone, somewhere. Fabiola Toussaint hopes to find the American dream when she comes with her mother from Haiti to live with her Aunt Jo and her cousins, Chantal, Primadonna, and Princess, on the corner of American Street and Joy Road in Detroit. Welcome back. He could be a street vendor, a luggage porter at a lorry park, a shoeshine boy, or a truck-pusher – one of those guys who roam Accra with a cart picking up metal scraps to take to the junkyards. Of course, my father was a great fan of America back then. All Rights Reserved. Read the excerpt from the introductory note of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Tumescent self-regard. Mami shoves Luca into the corner. On the way her mother gets sent to an Immigration Detention facility in New Jersey, so Fabiola goes by herself to Detroit. Then a quickening of sound as she crosses the patio with purpose, depresses the keys on her phone. In Haiti, with all its problems, there was always a friend or a neighbor to share in the misery. “Good boy.”. There’s no door on this shower, no curtain. An excerpt from “American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins. American Street is an evocative and powerful coming-of-age story perfect for fans of Everything, Everything; Bone Gap; and All American Boys. Because these are the modern bogeymen of urban Mexico. Luca had approached the table wriggling, whispered into Mami’s ear, and Abuela, seeing this, had shaken her head, wagged an admonishing finger at them both, passed her remarks.