The Hate U Give is a poignant story about a African American teen faced with an impossible situation and a difficult decision. Throughout her trauma, she must figure out who she is and what she wants her identity to be. This is The Hate U Give book review.
“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Book Title: The Hate U Give
Author: Angie Thomas
Publication Date: 2017
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
Goodreads Rating: 4.59 Stars
My Rating: 5 Stars!!
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
My immediate reaction to this book when I started reading the opening paragraphs (completely unintentional, but knee-jerk) was that the characters were ignorant. And that’s exactly why I needed to read this book.
1. I am so white. The dialect and colloquialisms that the characters use in this book were surprising to me. I’m used to hearing teenagers use slang and say “lit” and “thot” (Urban Dictionary, for you folks), but it surprised me when the parents were using slang words and speaking with “incorrect” grammar. I had to really challenge myself to push past my stereotypes and listen, truly listen, to what the characters were saying in their own language (more on that below…)
2. Praise for “Own Voices”. Recently, there’s been a push for more diversity in popular fiction, which is what drove me to add POC authors and characters to my reading goals for 2018.This book was written by an African-American woman, writing about African-American culture, and that is what made this book so impactful and so honest.
3. Starr. Carter. What struck me most about this book was the depth of the characters. So often (too often) we see minorities stereotyped into behaving in a certain way. Asian kids are smart, Mexican people are laborers, you know the tropes. Starr Carter is such a FULL character. Starr is allowed, by the author and by her parents, to be the angry black woman. But she’s also allowed to be a teenage girl who loves sneakers. And she’s allowed to blend in with the “hood” and with the privileged white school that she attends. She grapples with her identity throughout the novel, struggling between societal expectations and familial expectations and her own expectations of who she “should” be or could be. Aside from race, though that plays a large part in who she is, she struggles with what it means to be a teenager and have a voice, a voice that she could use nationally to provoke change.
4. This book is about race. There’s no way around it. Starr and the other main characters are grappling with what it means to be black in a society that believes that black means angry, militant, gangbanging, drug dealing hoodlums. She struggles to show her true black self to her white boyfriend and privileged friends. At the end of the book, her boyfriend, Chris, who is white and rich, sees where she is from the first time. The conversations that they have are so REAL. I could tell that the author was just DYING to set some white people straight (in the best way possible). Even Starr’s parents, the adults in the book, struggle with sending their children to a “white” school an hour away from their home and possibly moving out to the suburbs. They aren’t sure if this is a good move for their family because it feels like they are abandoning their home, their neighbors, their people, but if they don’t move, they are trading their safety to preserve that loyalty. The author did an amazing job showing this struggle in a real and honest way, and in a way that I could understand and sympathize with, as a white woman who has never faced a struggle like this.
5. The plot is so timely. One of the best decisions that the author made was to include Starr’s uncle that is a cop. Watching Uncle Carlos contend with the fact that his expectations and beliefs as a police officer have to go head-to-head with his heritage and family is what really put all of this in perspective to me. It took this book from being anti-cop (which, with this plot line, it really could have fallen into) to being a book that looked at each individual as a human. Every human makes mistakes, every human struggles with beliefs and stereotypes, and every human has to make tough decisions. Watching Uncle Carlos confront his expectations about his job and his family hit this lesson home more than anything else in the book. What this book does NOT touch on is the cop and his story. And I am completely ok with that, because in this case, his story is not the one that needs to be heard.
6. Dear White People. I’m so happy this book has such high reviews on Goodreads. There are a few reviews that focus on the few times that Starr and her family come off as “anti-white”. If you are white and you are reading this book, prepare to be a bit uncomfortable. There are many, many moments that I had to stop and think about the things I’ve done and the comments I’ve made (or didn’t stop other people from making). This book is not anti-white, but as a white person who is so used to having media and books and movies catered to my opinion, this book has forced me out of my comfort and made me consider the African-American point of view.
Towards the end of the book, there’s a conversation between Starr, Chris, DeVante, and Seven that puts it all in perspective. They are talking about why black people have such “unique” names.
“Anyway Chris,” Seven says, “DeVante’s got a point. What makes his name or our names any less normal than yours? Who or what defines ‘normal’ to you? If my pops were here, he’d say you’ve fallen into the trap of the white standard.”
The white standard. It’s a trap that I’ve fallen into so easily (see: the opening of this review), and something that I need to have pointed out to me. Often. On repeat. Because change can only occur if we (the white and privileged) realize our privilege and speak up about it.
7. A Note: There’s so much more I could say about this book. Starr’s friendship dynamics. Her struggle to find her voice and use it. The whole episode with the Just Us for Justice and their support (exploitation?) of Starr. Her parents’ commitment to the Black Panthers and Black Jesus. The gang wars. Everything about Kahlil and the way the media represents him. The exploitation of the media on tragedy. The constant need to protect police officers from facing the reality of their jobs and their decisions. I chose to focus on what impacted and stood out to me the most, but this book really is a wealth of discussion and I’d love to talk about it all with anyone who has read this book (because my husband will only listen to me babble about books for so long before his eyes glaze over).
This book punched me in my gut and left me out to dry, and you (you, being every one of you reading this review) should read it.
“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”
“At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.”
“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.”
“You can destroy wood and brick, but you can’t destroy a movement.”
“I’ve seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve Tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down.
Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.”
“People say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too.”
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Loved your thoughts on this book. It was hard for me to read because it made me so emotional. I felt like the characters were people I’ve known at some point or another. You’re right, it’s incredibly timely. It’s so necessary to continue a much needed conversation.
Yes! There were many times that I had to put the book down, just to soak up what I read and recover for a bit. Necessary, but a hard read.