Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
Told from the point of view of a young, unnamed black man.
Form and Meter
Verse
Metaphors and Similes
N/A
Alliteration and Assonance
"A space deep down inside of me" is an example of alliteration.
Irony
The police are meant to protect and serve; however, they do the opposite: they are violent to the communities they are meant to protect.
Genre
Children's Book
Setting
A community of color prior to and after a police shooting from the perspective of a young black boy.
Tone
Serious and Reflective
Protagonist and Antagonist
The young boy and the the black community are the protagonists; the police are the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The young boy's journey of self-discovery and his emotions, despite the constant threat of bodily harm - or even death.
Climax
When the boy discovers that the most important emotion to have is to love yourself.
Foreshadowing
The boy having an experience with the police is foreshadowed by the young black girl's experience with the police.
Understatement
The extent to which the police force brutalizes communities of color is understated in the book.
Allusions
To social movements like Black Lives Matter, the past deaths of unnamed black men at the hands of the police, to sociological concepts, to psychological concepts, and architecture.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The space inside the boy where all of his emotions are held is personified in the book ("a knot of electric emotion/seething, sizzling, burning/until I find the strength to reach inside")
Hyperbole
The emotions that are "deep down" inside of him is hyperbolic because emotions are never all that deep down in someone.
Onomatopoeia
The word "sizzle" is an onomatopoeia.
