All American Boys

All American Boys is told from the perspective of two alternating narrators, and Chapter 1 introduces the first of those narrators, high school junior Rashad Butler. It’s Friday afternoon and Rashad is hurrying out of his “wack school” and “wack ROTC drill team” because, as he puts it, “Friday was just another word for party” (5). Rashad explains that he’s part of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) because his father has implored him to join. Rashad’s dad was formerly in the military and insists that “there’s no better opportunity for a black boy in this country than to join the army” (8). Rashad’s older brother, Randolph, nicknamed “Spoony,” works for UPS, and their father says that “green and blue uniforms were okay, but brown ones meant failure” (9). Their father thinks that Spoony “is stuck working down at UPS” (9) because of his refusal to join the ROTC in high school, a belief he uses to push Rashad into being a cadet.

Rashad connects with his friend English Jones, the “stereotypical green-eyed pretty boy” (10) and captain of the

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