Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
1 book analyzed
Biography
Jason Reynolds (born 1983 in Washington D.C.) is a poet and novelist who did not read a book he chose himself until age seventeen — an admission he makes in interviews and that shapes his entire approach to writing for young people. He writes to reach the reader he was: someone who found most books irrelevant to his actual life. His fiction — Long Way Down, Ghost, All American Boys (with Brendan Kiely) — consistently addresses race, violence, and identity without softening the edges for a young audience. When Ibram X. Kendi approached him to adapt Stamped from the Beginning, Reynolds's role was explicit: translator, not co-author. His job was to carry Kendi's argument into a room that Kendi's book, excellent as it is, could not easily enter.