Moonwalking

It’s 1982 in Reagan-era America, and two boys in Brooklyn are trying to find their place in an unfriendly world.

JJ’s family, emigrants from Poland, struggle to survive the blacklisting of his father after President Ronald Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers union. JJ is autistic, and the only anchor in his changing life is the punk rock music that speaks to him through his headphones.

Pie, the son of a Puerto Rican woman and an absent African father, is trying to hold his family together. By day, he’s an A student, a responsible son looking after his mentally ill mother, fending off an abusive step-father, and protecting his little sister. But, by night, Pie is a graffiti artist, eager to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The boys are from very different backgrounds, but both must grow up before their time. Drawn together by their art and music, their friendship grows slowly as they find common ground. But racism and prejudice make crossing the boundaries between them challenging. JJ is white in a Puerto Rican neighbourhood, and his autism isolates him from the school social scene. Pie is popular with his friends, but, as unbridled racism thrives, he is treated with disdain by teachers, artists and police.

Despite the forces that divide them, the boys make tentative connections. As they see the links between their role models (trade union leader Lech Walesa and rebel artist Jean-Michel Basquiat) and their art (The Clash and graffiti “tags”), they focus on similarities rather than differences. But an encounter with police threatens to destroy their friendship, and JJ and Pie must each look inside their families, their cultures and themselves to learn what really matters.

Written in verse, the novel effectively weaves together distinct voices. The two authors write from authentic perspective. Zetta Elliott is a black feminist writer whose language and knowledge show insight into Pie’s situation: “I can always tell when somebody’s just/real light and somebody else is white/there’s something about the way they/move among us, the way they talk with/their hands, push out their lips, or laugh/with their eyes instead of opening their mouth/all it takes is a nod and I know who’s one of us/and who’s not.” (p. 66.)

Lyn Miller-Lachmann writes with moving empathy from the point of view of an autistic child. Herself diagnosed with autism as an adult, Miller-Lachmann brings the thought processes to life in JJ’s words: “I freeze/confused/cannot speak/now/in the echoey/chipped-tile lobby/any more than then/in the dean’s office/sweaty butt smashed against/orange plastic chair/useless fan/scrambling/all/the/words.”

There is much to enjoy in this novel. The poetic language evokes a multi-leveled, teeming and diverse city, with scents and sounds that are reflected in Pie’s art and JJ’s music. Both characters are embedded in their culture and history, but their ability to transcend their backgrounds plants seeds of hope. The attitudes, music, neighbourhoods and politics of the early 1980s are captured in convincing detail, and both institutionalized oppression and the promise of its end are part of what brings the boys together.

Young readers will appreciate the occasional concrete poetry and playfulness of form, and the different fonts provide a welcome clue to the speaker. The book’s title, Moonwalking, refers to the Michael Jackson dance move emblematic of that era of pop music. JJ and Pie walk on the other’s moon and learn to shine.

While Moonwalking does not end with a happy-ever-after resolution, there is hope for reconciliation and understanding. Set in a time where divisive right-wing activism in the US was on the rise, Moonwalking provides a welcome and poignant optimism that people can move beyond their differences to forge bonds through common human experience.