PUSHING HOPE

This account by one of the Exonerated Five is an inspiring story of one man’s fight against institutional racism.

In 1989, 14-year-old Raymond was arrested and accused (along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise) of assaulting and raping a woman in New York City’s Central Park. Although he, like the others, was innocent, the police used intimidating and manipulative interrogation techniques, and public opinion was against them. Raymond was convicted and imprisoned, receiving a conditional release when he was 21. Following the 2002 exoneration of the Central Park Five, Santana, who eschewed bitterness, sought refuge in art. This moving first-person account of his life emerges from interviews conducted by Carolyn P. Yoder, Editorial Director at Calkins Creek Books. It shows the ways racial profiling, entrenched within American society, has life-altering consequences for people of color (Santana’s father came from Puerto Rico, and his mother was Afro-Latina). The text is succinct and punchy, printed in large, bold, colorful type. Brown’s dynamic art, which often covers wordless two-page spreads, transports readers to 1980s Harlem (shown as a place filled with art and music), through gut-wrenching prison scenes, and into Santana’s rocky transition to a new life as a fashion designer and activist. Despite the suffering he endured as a boy and young man, the book’s overall tone is one of optimism.

A searing critique of the justice system with a narrative arc that turns despair into hope.