Acknowledgments
From Jason Reynolds: First and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge all the men, women, boys, and girls who have lost their lives as a result of police brutality. Your names, though too many for these pages, will always live on in our hearts and minds. Your untimely, unjust deaths will hopefully serve as the cornerstone of change for the growing generation. I’d also like to acknowledge the people of all walks of life, in all professional and social sectors, who have been ghting this ght. e protesters and community activists, the artists, the political allies, the teachers and librarians, the everyday folks who can’t quiet the internal screams—we all have a necessary part to play. ALL OF US.
I’d also like to extend a separate but very important salute to the women of every civil rights movement, whether victim or leader, who always seem to get overlooked. You have always been on the front lines. You have always been the backbone. So this is to say, I SEE YOU. WE SEE YOU.
THANK YOU.
Obviously, I have to acknowledge Brendan Kiely for co-writing this book with me. My respect for you is immense. It’s a true honor to call you a friend. Special thanks to Alicia Lockard and Christopher Smith for research help. I de nitely appreciate you both. And as always, a huge thank you to Elena Giovinazzo, my agent, for always believing in me, and to Caitlyn Dlouhy and Justin P.
Chanda, my editor and publisher, for once again providing me with a megaphone.
Last but not least, I want to thank my mother and father, and their mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers, for giving me an impenetrable sense of cultural pride, an unwavering sense of responsibility, and a childlike sense of hope. I do believe we can do better, be better. But we can’t hide behind fear. We can’t tuck truth between the cushions of comfort. We have to deal with it, really confront it, so that our children can live with a lot less weight. We owe it to them.
From Brendan Kiely: It is one thing to write a novel, but it is another thing to live the life, and I rstly want to acknowledge the families and individuals affected by police brutality. It is my hope that this novel will be a productive voice in the vital public conversation about the many injustices in icted upon those lived realities. I believe that we need to face honestly the legacy and effects of racism in our country, and that white people like myself—whose privilege is the result of systemic racism—have a particular responsibility to help dismantle it. We all live here. ere are no bystanders. We all have a role.
ere are many people who have been doing the essential work to foster the conversation about the effects of systemic racism and to deconstruct that system. I’d like to thank in particular the educators and organizers who I’ve worked with directly and who have inspired me, including the folks involved with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Carle Institute, the White Privilege Conference, the Anti-Racist Alliance of Educators, my colleagues at the Calhoun School, and other independent schools and public schools; and teachers, librarians, and friends in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—I love you and thank you and honor the change that you make in the world every day.
To my family—Maryanne Kiely, Tom Kiely, Niall Kiely, Trish Kiely, Heide Lange, John Chaffee, Joshua Chaffee—I love you all and I’m so deeply grateful for your love, encouragement, and support.
ank you all. And thank you especially Jessie Chaffee, my partner in all things in life, who teaches me about the expansiveness of the word love—this and everything for you.
ank you Rob Weisbach, super-agent and super-friend, for your enthusiasm, intelligence, and your belief in me and my work. I hold our partnership close to my heart.
In the making of this book, I am extremely fortunate to work with the amazing folks at Simon & Schuster, in particular Caitlyn Dlouhy, an editor who works with such speed, intelligence, and care, I have to wonder if she didn’t anticipate the whole story before it was written. ank you for making this book more the book it wanted and needed to be.
anks to Katy Hershberger, the tireless publicist who seems to be three people in one, and to whom I am especially grateful because she introduced me to Jason when she rst put us on tour together last year. And thanks also to Ruta Rimas and Justin Chanda, for believing in my work from the beginning and welcoming me into the S&S family—here’s to many more years of partnership.
And most importantly, thank you, Jason. e process of making this book was inspiring and challenging, and I’m so deeply grateful to have worked through it together with you. ank you for your friendship, because as we remind ourselves, it is always the friendship that matters most. ank you for trusting me, working with me, and believing that with both rage and love we could write this book.
