Ain't Burned All the Bright

Jason Reynolds’s Ain’t Burned All the Bright (2022) is a genre-bending YA book that combines poetic prose and visual art into a deeply personal work depicting a young Black boy’s experience of the 2020 global pandemic and the social upheaval that coincided with it. The book is narrated in first person and divided into three “Breaths”—each one a single extended sentence that reflects on various aspects of the experience and the psychological impact it is having on him and his family. Reynold’s poetry is combined with collage-like artwork by Jason Griffin that has been directly reproduced from his moleskin notebook to make the text appear like a journal. Together, the art and poetry explore the themes of Coping With the Overwhelming State of the World, The Healing Potential of Family and Art, and The Negative Effects of News Exposure. Reynolds is an award-winning author of both novels and poetry. His Track series is a New York Times best-seller, and the first entry in the series, Ghost (2016), was a National Book Award finalist; his YA novel As Brave as You (2017) won the Kirkus Prize and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teen; and his novel in verse, Long Way Down (2018), was named a Newbery Honor Book and a Printz Honor Book. In 2019, his novel Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks won the Carnegie Medal. In addition, Reynold’s graphic novel Miles Morales: Spider-Man was the inspiration for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Prior to Ain’t Burned All the Bright, Reynolds and Griffin had previously collaborated on a visual autobiographical work My Name is Jason. Mine Too. (2009).

This guide uses the 2022 Atheneum/Simon & Schuster's Caitlyn Dlouhy Books hardback edition of the text.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss anti-Black racism and racist violence.

Plot Summary

Stuck inside due to the global pandemic in 2020, the unnamed narrator sits on the couch in front of the TV and wonders why his mother won’t change the channel. She is watching the news, which continually cycles through the same negative stories about how poorly humanity treats the world and each other, and how things will never change. Meanwhile, the narrator’s brother plays a video game and refuses to look up from the screen, even when the narrator elbows him in the ribs; and the narrator’s sister talks to her friend on a video call about joining the nascent protests that are happening all over America in the wake of George Floyd being murdered by a police officer.

In a bedroom, isolated from the rest of the family, the narrator hears his father frequently suffering from coughing fits. The mother continues to watch the news, the brother refuses to look away from his video game, and his sister is still on the phone discussing the protests, so the narrator leaves them to check on his father. Unable to go into the room with him, he peeks through the crack in the door. In addition to a severe cough, his father is covered in sweat, but when he sees the narrator, he smiles and tells him everything will be back to normal in a few weeks. The father turns back to watch the same news program that the mother is watching, which is still talking about the same negative stories, now including social distancing. The narrator’s father smiles at him again, this time holding up his arms as if to hug him from a distance, but the narrator can tell he is trying to suppress a cough and stay composed.

The narrator continues to wonder why he is still sitting on the couch when he wants to just lie down; however, he also feels like he should be up looking around the house for an oxygen mask because their house is underwater. He gets up to look for an oxygen mask—in drawers, cabinets, closets, and the various boxes and containers around the house—but has no success and collapses back on the couch. The news cuts to a commercial and it sends the slightest tremor of a laugh through his mother’s jawline, making him realize that he had been looking for an oxygen mask in the wrong places. The unfulfilled idea of his mother’s laugh gives him a glimmer of hope that things can be okay, and instead of looking in boxes for oxygen, he begins looking to his family. He starts to recognize all the different signs of their shared memories, experiences, and connections that exist around the house. He also begins looking to things like literature, film, and music, which to him make life worth living. As he realizes that there might be enough oxygen in these things to keep them alive, the commercial break ends and the negative news cycle resumes. However, he looks at his family’s faces as they sit on the couch and briefly, they resemble the bottom lip of a smile. The book ends with the narrator still wanting to change the channel and asking if anyone has seen the remote.