The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (2017) is a gut-punch of YA novel. Starr, the novel’s high school protagonist, exists between two worlds. She lives in the poor, predominately Black, neighborhood of Garden Heights; she attends high school in an upper-middle class, predominately white suburb. From the novel’s opening scene, these two worlds create tension in Starr as she experiences both liminally, an outsider of sorts in each. But Starr’s psychological tension over which world is truly hers explodes with the cop’s bullets that kill her best childhood friend as she sits in the passenger seat of his car. The Hate U Give, a line borrowed from a Tupac song: “Thug life stood for ‘The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone’” (21), places the reader alongside Starr as the witness to an unarmed Black kid’s murder and ways the system and society—at both Starr’s posh school and in her poor hood—respond.
Obviously, there is plenty of timely cultural context for The Hate U Give. Starr’s life at school is that of a typical high school basketball player with her cute boyfriend and goofy circle of friends. And yet, as the novel progresses, the subtle racism of her peer’s insistence that she and the other Black kid in her class would be perfect together (on account of their race) to which they jokingly respond by calling each other Black boyfriend/girlfriend morphs into something more pronounced. Ultimately, Starr is forced to reckon with a longtime friend’s explicit racism. Like so many American teens, Starr grapples with identity and racism as she emerges a strong young woman.
At the same time, she has to deal with the terror she witnessed when her one surviving childhood best friend is gunned down by a cop in front of her. Starr must decide if and how to share her eye-witness account of Khalil’s death as she grapples with her own guilt that they weren’t as close as they had once been largely because of her school and friends outside the neighborhood. As we grieve alongside Starr and her neighborhood, The Hate U Give forces its reader to acknowledge how poor neighborhoods teeter on a razor-sharp edge between everyday life and, when the world’s racism becomes too much, riots.
Following Khalil’s murder, Garden Heights prepares for the worst. The Hate U Give explores the complicated nature of gangs and drugs in impoverished neighborhoods like Garden Heights. It also forces all of us to sit with the racism that saturates so much of American society. Starr and her family must precariously balance surviving while also standing up to the racist institutions that rarely find justice in the aftermath of murders like Khalil’s. Decisions about when and how to speak up and where to live are complicated and challenging. As Starr’s parents pursue the future they think is best for their family, Starr finds her voice. In their own way, Starr and her parents all work to support a brighter future for themselves and the people they love. As Starr struggles to find her response to Khalil’s murder, The Hate U Give provides a voice for all the young people whose lives have been shattered by police brutality and institutional racism. Thomas’s novel is YA, and certainly deals with plenty of teenage themes (dating, sex, friend-drama) but it also concisely delivers what it is to be a Black teen growing up in a poor urban neighborhood; thus, it is a must-read for all Americans.
A Few Great Passages:
“There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me” (7).
“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right” (154).
Bibliography:
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. Walker Books, 2017.
Bibliography:
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. Walker Books: 2017.
