All American Boys: Tuesday–Wednesday

by Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely
This novel by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely tells the story of Rashad and Quinn, two teenagers whose lives are changed after an incident of police brutality divides their community.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Friday–Saturday, Sunday–Monday, Tuesday–Wednesday, Thursday–Friday

Here are links to our lists for other books by Jason Reynolds: When I Was the Greatest, The Boy in the Black Suit, Long Way Down, Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. graffiti
    unauthorized drawings or writing on walls in public places
    Spray painted in wide, loopy neon-blue letters like a script of stars so bright they glowed in the day, and stretched so large it covered the entire sidewalk at the foot of the front stairs, was a graffiti tag.
  2. impromptu
    with little or no preparation or forethought
    We’d always sat together at lunch, only in fragments, never the whole team together, but with the impromptu gathering out front, everything had shifted.
  3. demographic
    a statistic characterizing human populations
    Paul had once told me about how the city’s demographics had changed over the last thirty years, and why that mattered for his job.
  4. agitated
    troubled emotionally and usually deeply
    “Listen to you!” Jill exclaimed, leaning in now too, agitated. “You sound like our mothers. But tell that to Rashad’s family. Rashad’s absent today. Again. I mean, I know that guy too.”
  5. scrimmage
    practice play between two teams
    We spent another hour practicing some plays, putting them into action in little scrimmages, and then Coach sent us to the weight room in pairs.
  6. racist
    discriminatory on the basis of skin color
    “I don’t think most people think they’re racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, ‘Not my problem.’ You could say, ‘It’s a one-time thing.’ Every time it happened.”
  7. reluctantly
    with a certain degree of unwillingness
    I looked up, reluctantly, and there on the screen was the police chief.
  8. immaculate
    without error or flaw
    He didn’t really say much except that they were investigating everything and that he had “the utmost faith in Officer Galluzzo’s judgment” and that the officer was “a veteran with an immaculate record.”
  9. refute
    prove to be false or incorrect
    Ma gave him a look. Not upset. But sad. Like she was sad that her son seemed so angry, so distrusting. And she didn’t even say anything to refute his statement, didn’t even argue with him, which to me was strange.
  10. invisibility
    the quality of not being perceivable by the eye
    And then I thought about what was right there in the text. Ralph Ellison talking about invisibility. Not the wacky science fiction kind, but the kind where people are looking at you but not seeing you, looking through you, or around you—like, why the hell shouldn’t our classes be talking about what happened to Rashad? Was what happened to him invisible? Was he invisible?
  11. adrenaline
    hormone secreted by the adrenal gland in response to stress
    He was trying to fight the kid off, and when we showed up, his adrenaline went so high that he couldn’t breathe. Asthma attack.
  12. pathetic
    inspiring mixed contempt and pity
    Once I finally finished the lap, which may have taken fifteen minutes—pathetic—I returned to my room to find two women in it, one I recognized and one I didn’t.
  13. testify
    give a solemn statement in a court of law
    “I saw everything. The way that officer . . . I just. . .” Now she started to get choked up. “I should go. I just mostly wanted to come by and give you this.” She handed me her business card. “If you need me to testify, I absolutely will.”
  14. protest
    a public manifestation of dissent
    “Thanks,” I said, suddenly thinking again about the fact that at some point, once I was out of the hospital and even after the protest, there was going to have to be a trial.
  15. victim
    an unfortunate person who suffers from adverse circumstances
    Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you. Rashad Butler, before all this.
Created on Wed Jul 19 17:28:15 EDT 2017 (updated Fri Jul 25 16:54:19 EDT 2025)

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