A YA Book of His Own
June 03, 2018
Alum writes the stories he didn’t see as a youth.
By Sala Levin | Terp
"Jason Reynolds ’05 has written 11 books, but he’d never even finished reading one until his freshman year at the University of Maryland, when he found himself gripped by the urgency of Richard Wright’s “Black Boy.”
"Nowhere on bookshelves had he recognized himself or the events that shaped his life as a young man of color growing up in Oxon Hill, Md.: the crack epidemic, the advent of HIV/AIDS or the emergence of hip-hop. 'There are very few books that I know of written during that time that talk directly about those things,' Reynolds says.
"That’s why The New York Times-bestselling author, who released both “Sunny” and “For Every One” in April, has built a career telling nuanced and complex tales about black children in true-to-life detail."
Read the complete article in Terp.
Photo by Jati Lindsay