Pushing Hope: An Illustrated Memoir of Survival

Based on recorded interviews with Raymond Santana, one of the Exonerated Five, this illustrated memoir—an important firsthand account that opens on the subject’s move to Harlem in 1989 at age 14—chronicles his wrongful imprisonment and the events leading to his present-day activism and entrepreneurship. Used to riding his bike to green spaces all over the Bronx and drawing often, Santana had never been in Central Park before the night of his unjust detainment. Detectives interrogate him for 30 hours, denying him sleep, food, and water before coercing him into fabricating a statement incriminating himself and four other boys in the rape of a woman in the park. Following his transfer to Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, Santana relies on education, art, and fashion to help him survive incarceration; these tethers later become the foundation of his prison reform activism. Santana’s accessible and conversational text, accompanied by vivid, immediate-feeling mixed-media illustrations by Brown (My Dad Is a DJ), immerses readers in the figure’s emotional experiences. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)