Miles Morales Suspended

Miles Morales is of Black and Puerto Rican heritage. How does his background contextualize his role as a hero, particularly given his efforts toward Combating the Undercurrents of Racism in society today?

How does Jason Reynolds make use of the various in-class assignments to explore Miles’s inner world, identity, and history? What do Miles’s responses to these assignments indicate about his character?

Miles’s experience of The Duality of Identity comes through his secret role as Spiderman and obligations to both honor his upbringing and accede to his school’s rules. How does Miles’s experience compare to those of other literary characters who find themselves torn between two worlds?

How does Jason Reynolds utilize the Marvel Universe and the conventions of the superhero genre to shed light on important issues like racism and identity formation?

Why does Miles want to organize a book drive for the youth prison? How can books be a crucial aspect of rehabilitation for incarcerated people?

How does Miles make his poetry personal, and how does he use it to work through the issues in his life that bother him?

What do Miles and the other students mean when they say they no longer want to be pincushions?

How does Tobin’s bizarre act of eating of the books represent a wider societal issue of censorship? According to the novel, what action can be taken to combat censorship?