How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon tells a story that everyone needs to read;there is no doubt that the events portrayed could happen to anyone at any point in their lives. The novel conveys the tale of a young black boy, Tariq Johnson, who was shot by a white male. Switching between seventeen different viewpoints, Johnson’s death affects each character differently in small or large ways. Those who were at the scene of the crime do not doubt what they saw, but their accounts also don’t match the things that others are saying. In the aftermath of death, these people want to put their lives back together and get justice for their son, best friend, or even a boy they never knew.
Seventeen viewpoints is a little too much, but it told the story well, and I thought Magoon did a stellar job with them all. Multiple viewpoints gets tricky sometimes, because many authors will recount the same exact event another character just witnessed with only a few differences in thought, and it becomes incredibly redundant. Magoon, however, uses all viewpoints to her advantage. Everyone believes they saw something different, so telling the story over again is always fresh and constantly makes you wonder what really went down.
My favorite part about the novel was the character development that happens in the length of the book, which is just a week. Many characters start to feel lost and confused after Johnson’s death, and it made me so sad thinking about how this is the reality of life. People kill people every day, sometimes it is gang violence, sometimes it’s racial bias, but the fact of the matter is that they all had someone who loved them. As Johnson’s best friend struggles to work through his death, he has to deal with pressure from both his father and the local gang leader. While the aftermath of death is an awful thing, the recovery process is even more important, and seeing characters grow was, in my opinion, the most important part of this book.
Looking back on the novel, after the initial “oh my goodness that was just so sad and overwhelming I want to cry” if feels as though not much really happened. It’s about the journey these characters take as they try to piece together the events of Johnson’s death and everything that came after. It’s not like many books that I read. There wasn’t much of a romance, or any major plot twists, things just happened, one by one, without any major heart-stopping from anticipation moments. That’s what made it great, though. The most important books to read are the ones that will teach you a lesson about life, the ones that are really, truly real. And this book is so real it’s heartbreaking.
