Q&A: Raymond Santana, one of the Exonerated Five, on his new YA memoir and life in Atlanta

Raymond Santana’s first book, Pushing Hope , chronicles his experience as one of the “Central Park Five,” five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of a 1989 assault and rape of a woman in Manhattan’s Central Park. Santana, who was 14 at the time, spent five years in prison during the public, traumatic, and life-altering ordeal.

After the real perpetrator’s DNA and confession to solely committing the crime proved their innocence, the convictions were overturned. Santana and the other four men, known now as the “Exonerated Five,” were exonerated in 2002.

Santana later moved to Atlanta, where he purchased a home with some of the settlement money that he received after filing a lawsuit against New York City. He has worked with the Innocence Project and continues to do