Point of View

The novel is narrated in the first-person, always from the perspective of a young Black boy who lives with his family throughout the coronavirus pandemic. When his father gets Covid-19 and the boy is overwhelmed by loneliness and fear, he tries to find a way to breathe and fight his way back to the surface against the crush of violence and hopelessness.

Reynolds and Griffin do not place any limitations on the access to the protagonist’s inner thoughts, especially because he is able to express himself through words and images, allowing the reader to understand his motivations, fears, and conflicts. Despite still being a child, the protagonist is often guarded with the people in his life, even those that he feels as though he can trust. On his own, the boy speaks his mind through art and rap because he is conscious of how...