Vocabulary & Context
The name of the language feature where two contrasting images, ideas, or words are placed side-by-side to highlight their stark differences.
Juxtaposition
A quote from Ms Rinaldi's evidence showing her prejudice against Amal.
Did Amal ever display emotions that were—
Yes, Ms. Rinaldi said
That’s why I work so hard with Amal
To channel his anger into his art
The label or stereotype the justice system tried to force onto Amal during his trial instead of seeing him as an artist and teenager.
criminal / monster / violent
Punching the Air is not written in traditional prose paragraphs; it is written in THIS FORM of storytelling using stanzas and line breaks. (Name the genre)
verse novel (or novel-in-verse)
What is a two-word term for when rules, laws, or social biases in an institutional system unfairly disadvantage specific racial or background groups.
Systemic Inequity/Systemic Racism
When Kadon urges Amal to join a "crew" for protection inside the facility, Amal resists because he feels joining a group creates another set of these ... [provide one metaphor Amal uses to describe this]
corners (or boxes/walls)
The main creative medium Amal uses inside his cell to keep his mind free and maintain his identity when his physical body is locked up.
art (or poetry/hip-hop/rap lyrics)
A direct comparison between two things without using "like" or "as" (e.g., calling a small cell a "tomb").
metaphor
What is a one-word term used to describe when a lower-income neighbourhood changes into a wealthier area as richer residents move in and drive up housing costs and property values?
Gentrification
The "college kid" witness uses this word to describe Amal’s group of friends in his evidence against Amal.
"mob"
This character can be seen as a symbol of institutional racism, and he does nothing to redeem himself throughout the text.
Tattoo/Officer Beale
The recurring symbol in the text that represents confinement, and/or imprisonment
Lines, corners, boxes, suffocation, drowning
The name of the language feature for when one text (e.g. Punching the Air) refers to other text/s, or important figure/s, or event/s.
Allusion
In this quote, Amal uses a metaphor/hyperbole to describe his feelings when Officer Stanford makes him fall from the prison bus. Provide the quote.
"I / shatter / into / a / million / pieces"
Clyde got the original charge reduced to "aggravated assault and battery" because this piece of evidence did not exist ...
... there was no DNA on the skateboard
The recurring symbol in the text that represents transformation, beauty emerging from darkness, and mental escape.
butterfly (light/paint)
A word used in the novel to describe being trapped, enclosed, or buried in a dark or tight space, either physically (like a cell) or mentally. Extra clue: it's also a recurring chapter name.
Entombment
Amal says "it wasn't about/who threw the first punch". Give the quote where he links gentrification (not the use of the n-slur) to the start of the fight. Clue: it begins "It was about..."
"So it wasn’t about/who threw the first punch/It was about courts, turf, space/Me and them other boys/were just trying to go home"
Name three stages of the criminal justice process in which we can see systemic racism in the world outside the text.
Any three of the following: racial profiling (e.g. by witnesses), police bias (e.g. in a decision to prosecute vs. issue a warning), unequal access to justice (e.g. inability to afford a lawyer (or your own choice of lawyer)), racial prejudice in court (e.g. by lawyers, judges, juries), disproportionate punishment (e.g. through harsher sentencing).
Provide the quote from the end of the book, when Amal sends his artwork, in a letter, to Imaldi Dawson
"This is what I want the world / to know about me. / My art-/My truth"