George M. Johnson - We Are Not Broken

Tamir Rice was twelve years old when he was killed by police officers who mistook his toy gun for a real one. Its a story thats all too familiar. I, too, was a Black boy who played with toy guns. My cousins Rall and Rasul and my little brother, Garrett, were Black boys who played with toy guns. All four of us got the speech early on about how unsafe it was for us to do the same things as our white friends. It was a reminder of the danger in our simple existence.

Black boys dont have it easy in American society. We face many systems of oppression that tend to harden us, forcing us to lock in our emotions and exist in a state of near-constant internal rage. These systems become pipelines to our traumapipelines that many of us never make it out of. Though this trauma and adversity often beat down our spirits, we may be bruised, but we are not broken.

We Are Not Broken is a window into the lives of Lil Rall, Rasul, Garrett, and Ifour Black boys growing up in the small city of Plainfield, New Jersey, under the supervision of our grandmother Nanny. We were four imaginative kids who were allowed the freedom to be individuals and the agency to make decisions rather than be told there was only one way. Centered on our adolescence, these stories discuss masculinity, racism, religion, violence, Blackness, and, most importantly, Black joy. In addition, these stories journey into Black womanhood and the narrative of the Black grandmothera figure that has often been the cornerstone of progress and love in our community.

This book also contains heavy messages around corporal punishment, mass incarceration, racism, anti-Blackness, and homophobia. There is strong language, including the words nigga and faggot. When reading this book, please refer to the words as the n-word or the f-word, especially if you are non-Black or if you are non-Queer, respectively.

Black boys in society are often seen as adults by the age of twelve. We are viewed as dangerous and more prone to violence, and often left broken. This book is an attempt to change our narrative and give voice to our stories through our own eyes. Most importantly, this is an opportunity to disprove any notion that Black boys dont deserve love, affection, care, and the space to be open, vulnerable, emotional, and kind.

Many places around the world are now in a state of protest over the police-caused deaths of Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. George Floyd was once a Black boy. Many Black men were once Black boys, and this is our story of survival in a world that has rarely seen our beauty.