jdglasgow's review against another edition
4.0
AWAY RUNNING is the last of three books I recently got from Inter-Library Loan as my local libraries did not have a copy. I’ve been excited to read this book as it is an earlier YA book by David Wright Faladé (although here going by David Wright), the author of BLACK CLOUD RISING. That book was in my Top 5 of those I read in 2022, and part of what I loved about it was the nuanced way that it approached race, racism, and race relations. What it suggested was obvious but also felt strangely revolutionary: different people have different experiences and views about their racial identities and how it relates to their social identities, and that’s okay! These are complicated and weighty things to grapple with and not everybody is going to have the same outlook. I anticipated more of the same realist approach to race in this book, which I knew was about two boys, one white and one Black, experiencing the effects or racism in Paris.
In fact, I knew going in that the book was not only by Wright Faladé but also by Luc Bouchard. This all obviously calls to mind the book ALL AMERICAN BOYS by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, which similarly tells the story of a white and a Black boy both wrapped up in an incident of racist violence, alternating chapters between the two characters’ perspectives. I expected alternating chapters between the perspectives of the two boys at the center of this book (Matt and Free) and, sure enough, that’s what I got (not “alternating” in a literal sense of the word, but the perspective did shift back and forth between them throughout the book). It's not clear to me whether Wright Faladé and Bouchard literally wrote one character’s chapters apiece, as I believe Reynolds and Kiely did. Probably? Regardless, because of the similarity, it is hard not to judge the two books against one another.
In general, I’d say that Reynolds and Kiely’s book is the stronger of the two; Jason Reynolds in particular is a spectacular writer. There were some strong scenes here, but not as many specific powerful quotes. A big difference between the two works is that ALL AMERICAN BOYS has its inciting event occur early on and it remains the center of attention throughout the book; AWAY RUNNING lets racial tension mostly simmer throughout the majority of the book, only coming to a head toward the end. I’m not sure that one or the other way of approaching the topic is better, except that as a result of not approaching its central topic head-on AWAY RUNNING instead spends an inordinate amount of time discussing American football. Matt and Free are both players on an American football team in Paris and a large part of their narrative is about the mechanics of their games. I found it apropos that I was reading this book over the weekend of Super Bowl Sunday, but in general I was kind of turned off by this aspect of the book as I am not a sports-type guy.
On the other hand, this mode of storytelling allowed the casualness of racism to come to the fore. Early on, Matt (the white kid) boards a plane to Paris on a lark to meet up with his friend Moussa (who he calls “Moose”). When he arrives, Matt stays at his cousin’s apartment but when Moose and his friends come by an older woman in the building insists that visitors aren’t allowed, despite having no problem with Matt being there. Matt is aware that her motives are likely race-related; he leaves with Moose and joins him with several of his friends, who are all Black. Matt feels uncomfortable there, but recognizes his behavior is not far removed from that of the woman at the apartment and feels ashamed. He feels even more ashamed when the football team’s coach arrives: “He was white, and I hated that I found relief in this.”
There’s another scene where the boys all try to get into a bar. Matt and Free are both let in by the bouncers, but Moose and several other players are kept out. Moose argues their motive was racist, but Matt doesn’t believe it because the bouncers themselves were African and Free was let in. He doesn’t appreciate that racism isn’t a mere black/white divide, but colorism and classism feeds into it as well. On the other side, though, his friend Sidi insists that he is oppressed by racism while leering at police and openly smoking marijuana outside of a McDonald’s. Yes, racism exists and is severe, but there is also a lack of self-awareness in the way Sidi invites people to see him as a threat. Again, this nuanced take on the subject—I wouldn’t call it “both sides”-ing it, but acknowledging that there are contours to the situation—is refreshing.
There are a couple of very strong scenes as well. One is Free’s recollection of when he found out that his father had been killed by an IED in Iraq. The way his family members react to the news is heartbreaking. The other strong scene takes up most of the ending of the book. After walking through an abandoned construction site (I was really hoping this was going to turn into an ANIMORPHS book at this point, but alas, no), the boys are stopped and held at gunpoint by police who insist they were vandalizing or stealing things. Three of the boys—Moose, Sidi, and Mobylette—run from the police, who chase them to an electrical station. The boys feel pressured to go inside and end up electrocuting themselves and dying. This is apparently something that happened in real life, too, which Faladé and Bouchad lifted for this book! It also, on a completely separate note, called to mind for me THE SURVIVORS by Alex Schulman, which I read in January of last year. The deaths of these boys leads to a well-attended protest march against police violence. A similar thing happens in ALL AMERICAN BOYS.
The difference between the two, though, is that ALL AMERICAN BOYS ends on a hopeful note. The march is the culmination of the dialogue about racism and shows its characters standing together for what is right. I think there is an uneasiness in the moment, if I recall correctly, because of the presence of police at the outskirts but the focus is on the march itself. AWAY RUNNING goes in a different direction. During the march, police officers smirk and snicker at the participants, leading to a confrontation. Looking for any excuse, one of the officers beats a kid who challenged him on his snickering. This leads to pandemonium, as the streets turn into a war-zone not unlike the kind we saw throughout America after the killing of George Floyd: cops beating, pepper spraying, shooting rubber bullets, and firing water cannons at people regardless of whether they were doing anything wrong; resisters throwing rocks at the police, burning vehicles, tearing apart storefronts in their frustration. It’s intense! And frankly, it’s certainly more realistic—a more sobering view of what could happen—than the optimistic ending of ALL AMERICAN BOYS.
Not that optimism is bad! It’s nice to end on a hopeful note, the idea that we can change the patterns we’ve built. AWAY RUNNING tries to have some of that, too. During the chaos, Free wonders what he might have done differently to prevent the situation from unfolding. “Or just what might I have done, period? Because it sure can feel like you did nothing when something like this happens.” He feels responsible for the deaths of his friends, but realizes that’s not right: he’s accountable to them, not responsible for what happened to them. After the night of violence has quieted down, the football team has their final game of the season. They, and the other team, appear in suits and ties and mutually forfeit the game in honor of the players they lost. It’s a nice thought, but that scene on the football field did not have the catharsis it seemed to be going for. It didn’t sell the optimism of rivals coming together and the moment felt curiously weightless.
Afterward, Free expresses that he thought coming to Paris would be a dream but it seems now more like a nightmare. Matt disagrees. “There’s always the good and bad, the black and white, both,” he says. This does seem to be the philosophy that Faladé espouses in the two books I’ve read from him, but putting it in these terms feels too simplistic. Yes, there’s both but it’s not just that things are black and white, but that they are both these things at the same time, that it’s fluid and in a different light could be read a different way. It’s a far more complicated, robust conversation than Matt’s thin explanation admits.
So. When I initially finished the book, I wrote that I was awarding it 3.5 stars. I’m probably still there after having written this review. There are some very powerful moments and I do appreciate the way the authors’ story about “the promise and the failures of multiculturalism and the accountability we all bear for one another,” as they describe it, is woven throughout the book. But on the other hand, I feel like it fails to achieve the positive note it prefers to end on and the emphasis on football in the middle part of the book was of no interest to me. It was good, though, and I’m rounding up to four because the parts that were good were very good.
In fact, I knew going in that the book was not only by Wright Faladé but also by Luc Bouchard. This all obviously calls to mind the book ALL AMERICAN BOYS by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, which similarly tells the story of a white and a Black boy both wrapped up in an incident of racist violence, alternating chapters between the two characters’ perspectives. I expected alternating chapters between the perspectives of the two boys at the center of this book (Matt and Free) and, sure enough, that’s what I got (not “alternating” in a literal sense of the word, but the perspective did shift back and forth between them throughout the book). It's not clear to me whether Wright Faladé and Bouchard literally wrote one character’s chapters apiece, as I believe Reynolds and Kiely did. Probably? Regardless, because of the similarity, it is hard not to judge the two books against one another.
In general, I’d say that Reynolds and Kiely’s book is the stronger of the two; Jason Reynolds in particular is a spectacular writer. There were some strong scenes here, but not as many specific powerful quotes. A big difference between the two works is that ALL AMERICAN BOYS has its inciting event occur early on and it remains the center of attention throughout the book; AWAY RUNNING lets racial tension mostly simmer throughout the majority of the book, only coming to a head toward the end. I’m not sure that one or the other way of approaching the topic is better, except that as a result of not approaching its central topic head-on AWAY RUNNING instead spends an inordinate amount of time discussing American football. Matt and Free are both players on an American football team in Paris and a large part of their narrative is about the mechanics of their games. I found it apropos that I was reading this book over the weekend of Super Bowl Sunday, but in general I was kind of turned off by this aspect of the book as I am not a sports-type guy.
On the other hand, this mode of storytelling allowed the casualness of racism to come to the fore. Early on, Matt (the white kid) boards a plane to Paris on a lark to meet up with his friend Moussa (who he calls “Moose”). When he arrives, Matt stays at his cousin’s apartment but when Moose and his friends come by an older woman in the building insists that visitors aren’t allowed, despite having no problem with Matt being there. Matt is aware that her motives are likely race-related; he leaves with Moose and joins him with several of his friends, who are all Black. Matt feels uncomfortable there, but recognizes his behavior is not far removed from that of the woman at the apartment and feels ashamed. He feels even more ashamed when the football team’s coach arrives: “He was white, and I hated that I found relief in this.”
There’s another scene where the boys all try to get into a bar. Matt and Free are both let in by the bouncers, but Moose and several other players are kept out. Moose argues their motive was racist, but Matt doesn’t believe it because the bouncers themselves were African and Free was let in. He doesn’t appreciate that racism isn’t a mere black/white divide, but colorism and classism feeds into it as well. On the other side, though, his friend Sidi insists that he is oppressed by racism while leering at police and openly smoking marijuana outside of a McDonald’s. Yes, racism exists and is severe, but there is also a lack of self-awareness in the way Sidi invites people to see him as a threat. Again, this nuanced take on the subject—I wouldn’t call it “both sides”-ing it, but acknowledging that there are contours to the situation—is refreshing.
There are a couple of very strong scenes as well. One is Free’s recollection of when he found out that his father had been killed by an IED in Iraq. The way his family members react to the news is heartbreaking. The other strong scene takes up most of the ending of the book. After walking through an abandoned construction site (I was really hoping this was going to turn into an ANIMORPHS book at this point, but alas, no), the boys are stopped and held at gunpoint by police who insist they were vandalizing or stealing things. Three of the boys—Moose, Sidi, and Mobylette—run from the police, who chase them to an electrical station. The boys feel pressured to go inside and end up electrocuting themselves and dying. This is apparently something that happened in real life, too, which Faladé and Bouchad lifted for this book! It also, on a completely separate note, called to mind for me THE SURVIVORS by Alex Schulman, which I read in January of last year. The deaths of these boys leads to a well-attended protest march against police violence. A similar thing happens in ALL AMERICAN BOYS.
The difference between the two, though, is that ALL AMERICAN BOYS ends on a hopeful note. The march is the culmination of the dialogue about racism and shows its characters standing together for what is right. I think there is an uneasiness in the moment, if I recall correctly, because of the presence of police at the outskirts but the focus is on the march itself. AWAY RUNNING goes in a different direction. During the march, police officers smirk and snicker at the participants, leading to a confrontation. Looking for any excuse, one of the officers beats a kid who challenged him on his snickering. This leads to pandemonium, as the streets turn into a war-zone not unlike the kind we saw throughout America after the killing of George Floyd: cops beating, pepper spraying, shooting rubber bullets, and firing water cannons at people regardless of whether they were doing anything wrong; resisters throwing rocks at the police, burning vehicles, tearing apart storefronts in their frustration. It’s intense! And frankly, it’s certainly more realistic—a more sobering view of what could happen—than the optimistic ending of ALL AMERICAN BOYS.
Not that optimism is bad! It’s nice to end on a hopeful note, the idea that we can change the patterns we’ve built. AWAY RUNNING tries to have some of that, too. During the chaos, Free wonders what he might have done differently to prevent the situation from unfolding. “Or just what might I have done, period? Because it sure can feel like you did nothing when something like this happens.” He feels responsible for the deaths of his friends, but realizes that’s not right: he’s accountable to them, not responsible for what happened to them. After the night of violence has quieted down, the football team has their final game of the season. They, and the other team, appear in suits and ties and mutually forfeit the game in honor of the players they lost. It’s a nice thought, but that scene on the football field did not have the catharsis it seemed to be going for. It didn’t sell the optimism of rivals coming together and the moment felt curiously weightless.
Afterward, Free expresses that he thought coming to Paris would be a dream but it seems now more like a nightmare. Matt disagrees. “There’s always the good and bad, the black and white, both,” he says. This does seem to be the philosophy that Faladé espouses in the two books I’ve read from him, but putting it in these terms feels too simplistic. Yes, there’s both but it’s not just that things are black and white, but that they are both these things at the same time, that it’s fluid and in a different light could be read a different way. It’s a far more complicated, robust conversation than Matt’s thin explanation admits.
So. When I initially finished the book, I wrote that I was awarding it 3.5 stars. I’m probably still there after having written this review. There are some very powerful moments and I do appreciate the way the authors’ story about “the promise and the failures of multiculturalism and the accountability we all bear for one another,” as they describe it, is woven throughout the book. But on the other hand, I feel like it fails to achieve the positive note it prefers to end on and the emphasis on football in the middle part of the book was of no interest to me. It was good, though, and I’m rounding up to four because the parts that were good were very good.
bookbybook's review against another edition
4.0
*This is a spoiler free review based on an ARC of Away Running*
Away Running exceeded my expectations by bringing to life a diverse cast of characters living through real life situations I never would have anticipated based on the books description.
When I first started reading Away Running and realized it had two points of view I was a little upset, but the authors pulled off the different views very well and made it easy and understandable reading for both. I found the diversity, of not only the two main characters but of the entire cast, fantastic and very well put together.
If you enjoy American Football and diverse characters, with well written plot twists I would suggest you pick up a copy of Away Running as soon as it is released!
Away Running exceeded my expectations by bringing to life a diverse cast of characters living through real life situations I never would have anticipated based on the books description.
When I first started reading Away Running and realized it had two points of view I was a little upset, but the authors pulled off the different views very well and made it easy and understandable reading for both. I found the diversity, of not only the two main characters but of the entire cast, fantastic and very well put together.
If you enjoy American Football and diverse characters, with well written plot twists I would suggest you pick up a copy of Away Running as soon as it is released!
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