I found this one to be very powerful. I read it almost in one sitting. Tracy has been writing letters to Innocence X, a fictional version of something like the Equal Justice Initiative, hoping that they will take her father's case to exonerate him. Otherwise, he will die in 275 days. She's balancing the normal problems and microaggressions in Galveston, Texas, but when her brother is accused of the murder of a white classmate, Tracy springs into action to find out what really happened.

This book shows the little things that beat down on Black people every day, the fear that violence will happen because you stepped a little out of line. One of the more powerful lines for me states that a white person with a gun has more rights than a Black kid with Skittles, which is sadly true in America.

This book was really good. It's important for young readers to see the rampant racism that is still happening today. For the black community, this book is an accurate depiction of issues they face everyday. For white readers, it is an eye opening look at what they might not be aware of since it doesn't directly affect them. It's an important topic in today's society so that we can finally start to address some issues and make real change. For far too long, these issues have been swept under the rug or ignored. The characters felt real and genuine. The mystery of who killed Angela kept the plot moving. The family dynamic was great. We need more books like this for teens!

What a beautiful book! Tracy's journey to get her father's case appealed with really poignant and moving. This is the kind of book that should be required reading for students! It's timely and relevant to what today's youth go through. I love that the author talked about racial injustice so candidly. Overall, I'd recommend this as a good read and an interesting journey.

This book was amazing! I loved the characters and this story so much! I was so invested the entire time and wondering how it was going to turn out for everyone involved. I feel like the issues brought up in this book are so important and I learned a lot. I really recommend this book to anyone as it is super fast paced and gets you so involved in the story so fast.

This is My America is such a necessary read, especially in today's political climate. While systemic racism might be a tough subject to discuss with our youth, I do believe characters like Tracy and her family delve into the topic in such a colorful, realistic way. I will definitely be sharing with my teens as well as other teens in my life.

Major thanks to Netgalley and Random House Books for Young Readers for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is My America by Kim Johnson: Whoa. Pick up this book if you haven't. It would be a great companion to Just Mercy or a look at racial law enforcement brutality as well as modern segregation in the south.

Phenomenal story and one of my top reads in 2020. I wanted this to win the Morris award.
Racism, white supremacy , mass incarceration, police, kkk, family, secrets, and PERSISTENCE- just fantastically done. Great to pair with Just Mercy.

A stellar debut from Kim Johnson.

Tracy Beaumont's father is in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Every week she writes letters to Innocent X organization asking for help with her father's case. Then her brother is accused of killing a popular white girl, and Tracy can see that history will repeat itself if she doesn't do something.

This Is My America tackles really serious topics of racial inequity in a fast-paced, thriller-like plot. It shines a light on huge social problems and is really hard to put down!

"Four hundred years, and we still ain't American to them, T. All that blood. We built America. Black labor built the greatest nation in the world for free. They ripped us from our family then, and they do it again with laws disguised as change. I'll be be in prison doing that labor for free."

High school Junior Tracy Beaumont knows the accuracy of that statement far too well. Wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit, her father now faces death row. With nothing less than sheer determination, Tracy repeatedly writes to Innocence X requesting their legal support for her father's appeal. When a white student is found murdered and her brother is the police's only suspect, Tracy doesn't falter, staying steadfast in her quest for justice.

Prior to starting my review, I took a moment to glance through a few already written, particularly those by Black Americans. My review cannot do THIS IS MY AMERICA justice, and I implore you to seek out some of their thoughts if you haven't already done so. I will say that I'm reading this book a year after it was published, and unfortunately, it is no less relevant. Johnson's writing is impactful and eye-opening, and I appreciate the fact that it's appropriate for a younger crowd, rather than just older teens or adults. The stunning cover drew me in, but the powerful narrative will stay with me indefinitely.

An eye opening look into the justice system of the U.S. and how it so often fails minorities, especially black men. This story is about a family torn apart trying to fight for their loved one’s innocence as his countdown on death row grows closer each day.

An extremely important novel for current America. I loved this book so much that I bought a copy for my classroom.

Ugh I wish this book wasn't so closely relevant still in 2021. Very powerful book that conveys all to well the horrors many Black people have endured.

When my paternal grandfather turned 90 in November, we went on a trip to the graveyard where my grandmother and many other members of my paternal family are buried. With the help of photos I took of relevant gravestones and Papa's stories, I pulled together my family tree.

I learned some interesting things, like when exactly both my parents' families immigrated to the US and the fact my dad's side is descended from Scottish lairds, but I also learned ugly things. Both sides of my family owned slaves. As I've known for years, my maternal grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. My blood carries a legacy of hatred, racism, and terrorism. In This Is My America, Tracy has to fave both historical and modern white supremacy to save her dad and brother from unjust deaths at the hands of the state.

Tracy's family is an outsider in multiple ways in their Texas town: they're one of the few Black families, they're relative newcomers (they settled there after being uprooted by Hurricane Katrina), and her dad was convicted of murdering two white people. He's on death row with less than a year until his execution date and he was wrongly convicted.Tracy will do anything to save him: ruin her brother's big TV interview, tangle with white supremacists, and even risk her own life. The girl has backbone for days, but it isn't something to praise. She's this way because the racism she saw and experienced made her this way. She should be able to enjoy her childhood, but systemic racism never let her have one in the first place.

God, this book is tense. The stakes are high, the danger Tracy is in because of her situation and her Blackness being all too real. The question is never whether her father really killed that couple or if her brother killed the girl he was seeing in secret; both guys definitively didn't. Instead, the question is whether Tracy can prove their innocence in such a way the racist local police force can't do anything about it. Toward the end, the story had me so gripped that I had to switch from the excellent audiobook to a print version. Narrators can only speak so fast and I can read a whole lot faster than that!

Omnipresent as it is, white supremacy is practically a character itself throughout the novel. The more uninformed, unaware folks say racism will die out with old people, but that isn't the case and This Is My America won't let you kid yourself about that. In contrast to police workshop-running Tracy, some of her classmates are big Blue Lives Matter supporters and are meeting in secret to form their own hate group. One of those kids? The sheriff's son. Later on, Tracy finds a photo of the Klan lynching a Vietnamese man. Included in the photo are the sheriff's father as well as the grandfather and mother of Drew, Tracy's best friend and semi-crush.

So no, racism won't just "die out." Unless white people in particular actively fight to end it, newer generations will inherit that hatred and continue it. I've seen it in 25-year-old Madison Cawthorn, the current youngest member of Congress who spouts hatred and has been accused multiple times of sexual harassment. I saw it the day Joe Biden was announced as the 2020 presidential election winner, when two boys who weren't even ten stood outside my neighborhood park with a big Trump banner in their hands. Without doing the work, we'll keep seeing the young adopt this hatred from the adults in their lives.

As far as I know based on historical records of lynchings in Georgia, my grandfather didn't participate in a documented lynching. However, his family had been living in the same tiny town since at least the early 1800s and there were several lynchings in that town in the late 1800s. Even if he didn't, his grandparents almost certainly did and he still engaged in a campaign of terrorism against the Black people around him.

The roots of my family tree were watered by the blood of the enslaved and the lynched and the terrorized, and I will never forget that. This Is My America is a novel you will never forget. It will make white readers have a self-reckoning and give everyone hope that racism can be defeated. We'll need everyone and everything we have, but we can do it.

I also recommend reading Johnson's author's note for her explanation of certain narrative choices she made. It will make you appreciate this future classic that much more.

"You can't separate humanity from the legal system."

Emotional, powerful, and important debut book that everyone should read or listen to.. It examines Mass incarcerations and it's impact on families and communities. The book deals with the death penalty, false accusations of Black people, Trauma, and white nationalist groups. It's also hopeful, Tracy Beaumont never stop fighting for her family and for justice.

With all of the high ratings I've seen, I'm surprised that I didn't really enjoy this book that much! This Is My America deals with some serious and exciting topics, but I guess I didn't like how it was handled.

I honestly hated the main character in the first chapter, but she became likable afterwards and all the way until the ending. I sometimes wondered why she did the things she did throughout the story, but that's the way it works in life - you see people do things that you question. She had good reasons for taking the actions that she did, even though I didn't always think it was rational or agree with it.

I'm giving This Is My America three stars because I feel like this book was way too long for the events in it and because I didn't enjoy reading about many of the characters. Maybe if this novel was more concise I'd rate it higher.

5 stars. Wow! I loved this book so much. The characters pack a punch, the story is gripping and timely, and the writing was fast-paced. Review to come. I also bought this book for my class!

Due to being a high school teacher, I have been falling behind on reviews. Here are my initial thoughts.

This is My America by Kim Johnson can easily sit alongside Nic Stone’s Dear Martin and The hate You Give by Angie Thomas as required reading in schools.⁣
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Seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont’s father is sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit and after several years of attempts to get his conviction overturned, the Innocence X organization agrees to take on the case. Just when the Beaumount family finally get some hope they so desperately desire, Tracy’s brother disappears and is accused of murdering a local girl.⁣
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And the emotional roller coaster begins. Stories like this aren’t new, but they need to be told.⁣
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Covering aspects of Black Lives Matter, the racial injustices that Black people face, racism; I mean I can go on and on, this book is worth the read for our youth. Johnson provides an amazing list of resources and books to read in the back of the book. ⁣
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Thank you, Getunderlined for gifting me this copy, I am happy to pass this book on to my daughter, I know she will get so much out of it. 5/5 stars⁣
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A debut, powerful, effective telling of what life is like in America for People of Color.

Tracy Beaumont is doing everything in her power to get her dad free and out of jail and furthermore off of Death Row. Meanwhile, her older brother, Jamal, a track star who has so much potential both scholastically and athletically, is wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit. Both Tracy's dad and brother are victims of a racist history that haunts her small town.

Tracy refuses to stand by and watch her family be torn apart again and again and decides to do all she can to have the light shine upon the injustices that exist around her.

This book is very timely, for obvious reasons, as it can help all readers realize the sick and twisted nature of the world in which we live, in this time and place! This book makes you, anybody who reads it, want to stand up for jusice to be served and do something instead of just standing by idly and allowing these attrocities to continue. Read this book, then share it with your mom, your dad, your siblings, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, pastors, etc. Everybody and their mother ought to read this book, as Kim Johnson's style of writing is one that is so full of emotion and truth in these unsettling times; we can all learn from this!

This book was so good.

It was amazing to see a YA thriller by a black writer with a black protagonist that also features contemporary black issues. This will be such an engaging, strong book to use with my class to talk about serious issues. I will be using this book in my classroom!

WOW. I'm mad at myself for keeping this one on my virtual shelf for so long. It was infuriating, perfectly written, heartbreaking, and absolutely gripping. This is one I'll definitely read again.