I Am Alfonso Jones
By Tony Medina
Illustrated by Stacey Robinson, John Jennings
Paperback: $18.95
Ebook
Alfonso Jones can’t wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school’s hip-hop rendition of the classic Shakespearean play. He also wants to let his best friend, Danetta, know how he really feels about her. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer mistakes a clothes hanger for a gun, and he shoots Alfonso.
When Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife, he’s on a ghost train guided by well-known victims of police shootings, who teach him what he needs to know about this subterranean spiritual world. Meanwhile, Alfonso’s family and friends struggle with their grief and seek justice for Alfonso in the streets. As they confront their new realities, both Alfonso and those he loves realize the work that lies ahead in the fight for justice.
In the first graphic novel for young readers to focus on police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, as in Hamlet, the dead shall speak—and the living yield even more surprises.
Foreword by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy.
Read the Foreword by Bryan Stevenson and Tony Medina's Author's Note.
Book Trailer: I Am Alfonso Jones
Check out Tony Medina's article in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Journal, Language Arts, titled, "Alfonso Jones Matters." This is a personal narrative detailing Tony's construction of a protagonist for a graphic novel that captures the quest for justice at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Gene Luen Yang, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and author of AMERICAN BORN CHINESE and BOXERS AND SAINTS
LeVar Burton, Actor, Director, Author, and Reading Activist
Daniel José Older, author of SHADOWSHAPER and SHADOWHOUSE FALL
Nikki Giovanni
Randy DuBurke, illustrator of YUMMY: THE LAST DAYS OF A SOUTHSIDE SHORTY
Ibi Zoboi, author of AMERICAN STREET
Katheryn Russell-Brown, University of Florida Law professor, Director, UF Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, and author of LITTLE MELBA AND HER BIG TROMBONE
Frederick Luis Aldama, author of LONG STORIES CUT SHORT: FICTIONS FROM THE BORDERLANDS and LATINX SUPERHEROES IN MAINSTREAM COMICS
Tanita Davis, author of PEAS AND CARROTS and MARE'S WAR
Allie Jane Bruce, Children's Librarian, Bank Street College and co-founder of Reading While White
About the Creators

is the author of six beloved books for young readers, as well as multiple volumes of poetry for adults. A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and a professor of creative writing at Howard University, Dr. Medina is a two-time winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. He lives in the Washington, DC area.

STACEY ROBINSON is an assistant professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois and an Arthur Schomburg Fellow with an MFA from the University at Buffalo. As part of the team "Black Kirby," he works with fellow artist John Jennings to create graphic novels, gallery exhibitions, and lectures that deconstruct the work of comic book legend Jack Kirby into re-imagined Black resistance spaces inspired by hip-hop, religion, the arts, and sciences. Robinson lives in Illinois and can be found on Twitter (@ProfSARobinson) and Instagram (@StaceyARobinson).

co-edited the Eisner-nominated anthology The Blacker the Ink. He is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside, and the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Jennings lives in California.