I didn’t make any resolutions this year. But I did last year. One of those was to read at least one piece of Young Adult (YA) Literature, a designation of books I’ve never fully understood. Why limit who should read certain books?

Last year, as I was mulling what to read, my daughter sent me this article: http://www.thecut/TeensAlreadyKnowHowtoOverthrowtheGovernment/

Lisa Wilson reminds readers of a tweet that Parkland, Florida teacher Jennifer Ansbach sent stating: “I’m not sure why people are so surprised that the students are rising up — we’ve been feeding them a steady diet of dystopian literature showing teens leading the charge for years. We have told teen girls they are empowered. What, you thought it was fiction? It was preparation.”

I was curious whether a YA book could help me – a white woman leaving middle-age, from a privileged background – come close to understanding the experience of racism and its impact on a young person’s life. So I read a couple of books but found the most enlightening one to be Away Running by David Wright and Luc Buchard. http://www.awayrunning.com/ This is a story of Matt, a privileged white Montreal teen, and Free, an African-American guy from Texas, who meet in a Paris suburb to play American football, a passion they both share.

Away Running is a sophisticated story that looks at the friendship between these two young men. It gives readers a look at life in Texas for a young Black man dealing with family tragedy, the frustrations of a young Canadian white man of privilege with restrictions and expectations he finds unbearable, and the complex dynamics of an interracial suburb of Paris that includes immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa. The story never shies away from the challenges that arise when people from different places, cultures and beliefs meet face-to-face. Interwoven in this tension, though, readers see glimpses of the universal hopes and emotions that we all share. In different ways, both heart-warming and tragic, we see Matt and Free and their football-playing teammates and opponents challenged to be kind and compassion. Away Running broadened my way of reflecting on cultural and racial prejudice and its impact on communities everywhere, not just here in the States. 

I also learned a lot about football. During the Super Bowl this Sunday, I want to see if I recognize plays described in Away Running. I’m curious about the background of the individual players and what obstacles they’ve overcome to play football as a team,  just as Matt, Free and their teammates did despite their differences in everything from race, language, socio-economic status and home country.