How It Went Down

This is a really great teen novel, told from multiple perspectives, about the shooting of a young black man by a white man and the aftermath for the community where the shooting took place. On the face of it, it's a simple story told through the experiences of the people affected by the shooting. The author does a beautiful job of showing how the effects of the shooting ripple out from the immediate community to touch people surprisingly far away, and she creates voices for her characters that feel authentic, however likable or unlikable they may be. The result is a deep and painfully human story that doesn't offer any easy answers for the problems it depicts, but offers hope in the resilience of some of its characters.

This book was chosen for the Saint Paul Public Library's 2015 Read Brave program, a community reading/teen reading program. The Luther Seminary Book Club read and discussed it in January, and some of the participants expressed interest in attending author events in February.

I found this book very interesting. It was intriguing to see one incident from everyone else's point of view. It is crazy how words can get mixed up and mistaken for someone saying something entirely different. Also, it's a shock to realize how people react before they actually know what is happening. The book mainly relates to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

In this book Tariq Johnson, a black teenager, is shot by Jack, a white adult. Tariq's point of view is never shown because (of course) he is dead. It was a shocker to me that Jack's point of view was not voiced in the book. All that was said of him was a few things he said to his friend, Tom Arlen, and what Tom Arlen thought of Jack. We never really get to know what was going through Jack's mind when he shot Tariq, all we and the characters in this book can do is make up our own speculations.

Speculations, however, seems to be what leads Tariq to his death. Everyone assumed certain things about Tariq. A shop owner calls after Tariq. Another guy assumes that Tariq has stolen from the store, while also assuming he is a part of gang because of his attire and interaction with one of the gang members. The guy tries to stop Tariq, in which makes the gang members surround the two thinking they are going to fight. In turn, this makes Jack think that they are trying to jump the white guy. So, he shots Tariq.

This book shows how confusing it can be trying to figure out what actually happened at an incident, especially when one person dies at the incident. Assumptions takes this story through twists and turns as people try to figure out what type of person Tariq really was.

I found it astonishing that no one really considered what type of person Jack could be. The main question that I had through the whole novel was, “Does the type of person you are, really justify your death?” This in turn made me think of so many other topics like the death penalty.

I would recommend this book to anyone. It's been a long time since a book has made me think of something that is actually a question that has no right or wrong answer because the answer depends on the person. Just the same, how people describe you when you're not around depends more on they're feelings towards you than anything you may or may have not done.

This was a definite pageturner and it was sickeningly realistic. It's a story we've seen play out in the news WAY too many times–young black man killed by a white man who isn't held accountable for it. I thought the multiple narrators worked very well for this kind of story, when there are so many conflicting stories going around, and especially after the traumatic event people become less sure of what they saw.

I'd say it's a little too intense (in terms of language especially) for me to booktalk to junior high kids but I think it would be a great one to use in high school classrooms or just to recommend to teens looking for realistic fiction, or who are trying to make sense of how screwed up everything is right now.