All American Boys takes place in a city called Springfield, somewhere in the United States, over the course of one week. Each chapter describes one day and is broken into two parts, told by two different narrators.

The story begins with Rashad, a Black high school junior and the first narrator, getting ready to go to a party after school. When he enters a convenience store to buy a bag of chips and a pack of gum, a woman accidentally trips over him while he is looking in his school bag for his phone. Alerted by the commotion, the store’s clerk accuses him of trying to steal the chips, and a policeman takes Rashad outside and beats him unconscious. Meanwhile, Quinn, a white high school senior and the second narrator, is standing outside the convenience store when the policeman beats Rashad. Quinn does not know Rashad, but he recognizes the policeman as Paul, the older brother of one of his best friends. Paul also stepped in as a father figure when Quinn’s father was killed in Afghanistan.

The rest of Rashad’s story takes place primarily in the hospital, where he is suffering from internal bleeding. Rashad initially feels violated, but as a national news story begins to develop around his experience with police brutality, Rashad must determine how he wants to deal with the situation. He vacillates between wanting to ignore what happened and go back to his normal life and realizing that he has the power to make a political statement. In the hospital, he is subject to a number of opinions; his father, a former police officer, initially seeks to blame Rashad for what happened and cannot come to terms with the idea that a police officer would have beaten Rashad without just cause. Rashad’s brother, Spoony, is a political activist who attempts to help Rashad by contacting the press and organizing a protest march. While Rashad feels victimized, he is not sure that he wants to become a political icon representing the injustices of police brutality.

To pass the time during his recovery, Rashad draws—a hobby he had before his experience with police violence—and bases his style on that of Aaron Douglas, a painter from the Harlem Renaissance. Over time, Rashad’s sketches become more detailed and more political. He is still unsure if he wants to lead a protest march with his brother and friends when he is visited by Mrs. Fitzgerald, who runs the hospital gift shop. She tells Rashad that she regrets never having become involved in the civil rights movement when she was younger and encourages him to take a stand. Rashad’s father later visits him again as well, telling Rashad that he quit the police force when Rashad was young because he had wrongfully shot and paralyzed a young Black man whom he had thought was a criminal. In the final chapter, Rashad is nervous, but he musters up the courage to march from the convenience store to the police station along with thousands of members of the Springfield community. At the end of his story, Rashad lies on the ground, representing a dead body, while his brother yells the names of other victims of police violence through a megaphone.

Meanwhile, Quinn must come to terms with the unjust police brutality that he witnessed and determine where his convictions lie: should he be faithful to his friends and family, or should he make a statement to the police, damning Paul, who was once his role model and father figure? Throughout the first few chapters, Quinn tries to stay neutral in the debate on...