A review by emily_m_green
I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Thank you to my parents for purchasing Tony Medina’s I Am Alfonso Jones in support of my love for all things comic book.
Alfonso Jones is a Good Kid. He is in a high school for high achievers, he has a job as a bicycle messenger, he stays out of trouble and plays the trumpet. But it does not matter how good Alfonso is, because he is Black--he is racially profiled and shot in the back by a security guard. The security guard mistakes the hanger in Alfonso’s hand for a gun, and fatally shoots Alfonso.
Instead of ascending to a heaven he clearly deserves, instead Alfonso becomes stuck on a subway car full of other unjust, racially motivated murder victims of police officers. On the bus, Alfonso meets Eleanor Bumpers, Amadou Diallo, Henry Dumas, and others. They are destined to remain on the subway until they find justice for their deaths.
As the newest member aboard, Alfonso learns of their deaths and sees parts of his life. In a bit of bitter irony, Alfonso’s father had been incarcerated for a crime he did not commit since before Alfonso’s birth. Alfonso is killed before he and his father can unite for the first time.
While Alfonso is a fictional character created with a realistic story, the other riders of the subway car are based on real people who were murdered by police.
I Am Alfonso Jones was written and published before either George Floyd’s murder or the pandemic. The story, in this way, echoes long before any sense of justice was seen in cases of police violence and seems like the roar leading to the pounce. It would be incorrect to claim that justice has been reached, but it would be unfair to the people who have worked so hard to protest and support Black Lives Matter to say that police violence against unarmed African Americans is not more recognized by the white America.
There is still more work to be done. There are still people who feel threatened by racial justice and feel the need to proclaim “All lives matter” and there is still systemic racism inside the justice system and in other areas of the law.
One book will not cure all of the ills. However, in putting Alfonso’s situation into context and showing an innocent teenager gunned down, this book can help people to understand the smoke screens thrown up the media, government, and law enforcement, including digging into Alfonso’s past until they find the one kid who bullied him and is willing to speak ill of him. And the unthinking defense of an officer who was not only off-duty with a gun, but also charged into a situation without any substantial information. It is the knee-jerk reaction of locking the doors of a car or stepping to the side on a sidewalk. The assumption of danger based on skin color before assessing the situation is of much greater danger. And, as the story shows, a white man who killed school children is walked out of the school alive--he murdered school children, but he is not considered dangerous enough to be shot, while Alfonso, who harmed no one, is shot without question.
The story is one of grief and action, as Alfonso’s surviving friends and family must decide how they will respond. Each steps up in their own way.
Would I teach this book? The short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated.
Many students do not want to talk about race or racism. I often hear from students that talking about racism makes it worse by pointing it out or that it is not racism or that they do not see race. Many want to excuse acts of racism based on intention or ignorance or suggest that targets of racism simply need to grow a “thicker skin.” Other students are just generally uncomfortable with discussing race at all. Discussing racism in the context of police violence is even more difficult, as many seek to excuse officers because of the difficult and dangerous position that officers are in every day or they see criticizing the acts of some or addressing the system of policing itself is a condemnation of all police officers. Especially for students who have parents in law enforcement, they find these discussions especially scary.
Often, students of color do not speak up during these conversations and listen uncomfortably to others discuss the experience of people of color, guessing how it might feel like to be a person of color in our country.
While I do not shy away from teaching texts that discuss racially motivated police violence, I am extremely picky in the texts that I teach. I Am Alfonso Jones does have a nuanced examination, including a consideration of how the guilty officer might feel, and does not depict him as an overtly despicable human being, while it does not absolve him, either. This kind of generous view of the officer invites those who do not understand that a person may act racist without intentionally doing so and without the cognizance that they are, indeed, racist. In this way, students (and other readers) who do not comprehend the true insidiousness of racism or who do not see structural racism might begin to have a glimpse of the fire at the center of the cave.
Alfonso Jones is a Good Kid. He is in a high school for high achievers, he has a job as a bicycle messenger, he stays out of trouble and plays the trumpet. But it does not matter how good Alfonso is, because he is Black--he is racially profiled and shot in the back by a security guard. The security guard mistakes the hanger in Alfonso’s hand for a gun, and fatally shoots Alfonso.
Instead of ascending to a heaven he clearly deserves, instead Alfonso becomes stuck on a subway car full of other unjust, racially motivated murder victims of police officers. On the bus, Alfonso meets Eleanor Bumpers, Amadou Diallo, Henry Dumas, and others. They are destined to remain on the subway until they find justice for their deaths.
As the newest member aboard, Alfonso learns of their deaths and sees parts of his life. In a bit of bitter irony, Alfonso’s father had been incarcerated for a crime he did not commit since before Alfonso’s birth. Alfonso is killed before he and his father can unite for the first time.
While Alfonso is a fictional character created with a realistic story, the other riders of the subway car are based on real people who were murdered by police.
I Am Alfonso Jones was written and published before either George Floyd’s murder or the pandemic. The story, in this way, echoes long before any sense of justice was seen in cases of police violence and seems like the roar leading to the pounce. It would be incorrect to claim that justice has been reached, but it would be unfair to the people who have worked so hard to protest and support Black Lives Matter to say that police violence against unarmed African Americans is not more recognized by the white America.
There is still more work to be done. There are still people who feel threatened by racial justice and feel the need to proclaim “All lives matter” and there is still systemic racism inside the justice system and in other areas of the law.
One book will not cure all of the ills. However, in putting Alfonso’s situation into context and showing an innocent teenager gunned down, this book can help people to understand the smoke screens thrown up the media, government, and law enforcement, including digging into Alfonso’s past until they find the one kid who bullied him and is willing to speak ill of him. And the unthinking defense of an officer who was not only off-duty with a gun, but also charged into a situation without any substantial information. It is the knee-jerk reaction of locking the doors of a car or stepping to the side on a sidewalk. The assumption of danger based on skin color before assessing the situation is of much greater danger. And, as the story shows, a white man who killed school children is walked out of the school alive--he murdered school children, but he is not considered dangerous enough to be shot, while Alfonso, who harmed no one, is shot without question.
The story is one of grief and action, as Alfonso’s surviving friends and family must decide how they will respond. Each steps up in their own way.
Would I teach this book? The short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated.
Many students do not want to talk about race or racism. I often hear from students that talking about racism makes it worse by pointing it out or that it is not racism or that they do not see race. Many want to excuse acts of racism based on intention or ignorance or suggest that targets of racism simply need to grow a “thicker skin.” Other students are just generally uncomfortable with discussing race at all. Discussing racism in the context of police violence is even more difficult, as many seek to excuse officers because of the difficult and dangerous position that officers are in every day or they see criticizing the acts of some or addressing the system of policing itself is a condemnation of all police officers. Especially for students who have parents in law enforcement, they find these discussions especially scary.
Often, students of color do not speak up during these conversations and listen uncomfortably to others discuss the experience of people of color, guessing how it might feel like to be a person of color in our country.
While I do not shy away from teaching texts that discuss racially motivated police violence, I am extremely picky in the texts that I teach. I Am Alfonso Jones does have a nuanced examination, including a consideration of how the guilty officer might feel, and does not depict him as an overtly despicable human being, while it does not absolve him, either. This kind of generous view of the officer invites those who do not understand that a person may act racist without intentionally doing so and without the cognizance that they are, indeed, racist. In this way, students (and other readers) who do not comprehend the true insidiousness of racism or who do not see structural racism might begin to have a glimpse of the fire at the center of the cave.