The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Release Date: February 28, 2017
My Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 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.
I'm sure you've heard of this book and read the summary. I'll recap: Starr Carter lives in the "ghetto." She runs into one of her childhood best friends, Khalil, at a party she goes to; a fight breaks out, and they leave together. On the way home, they are stopped by a police officer, who shoots Khalil despite the fact that he was unarmed. However, this book is more than just that.
Starr's family is central to the book; they're her support system, helping her through a rough time. Her dad is a former King Lord, one of the gangs in her city; now he owns a local grocery store. Her mother is a nurse at a clinic. Starr also has a younger brother and an older half-brother, Seven. They all attend an expensive private school (read: mostly white), where they are some of the very few black kids. She's also close with her uncle Carlos, who was her father figure while her own father was in jail.
After the shooting, Starr is forced to return to her normal life because her parents don't want her to be revealed as a witness to Khalil's death. This includes hanging out with her group of friends, one of whom slowly starts to show her racist side, and her boyfriend, Chris. Starr doesn't tell them anything about the shooting; in fact, she tells them she doesn't even know Khalil. She does this because she keeps the two sides of her life separate, and she doesn't want to hear her friends' opinions about what they don't know.
And they don't know. Her friends are all white (except for Maya who is Chinese) because the school is mostly white. Hailey, the "friend" who makes sly, racist comments, is a glaring example of all the white privilege in the world right now. I didn't like Chris at first because he was so ignorant at first, but I grew to like him because he tries so hard to understand the other half of Starr's life, the side that she hid from all of them for so long.
My point about all of this is that Starr has more in her life than Khalil's death. While the book begins with it, we experience more of the repercussions of his murder by seeing more of Starr's life. We all hear about police brutality, but really, we don't hear about the aftermath that the victims and the witnesses go through. Like how Starr at first is scared of white men because the police officer who killed Khalil was white. Like how she starts to read more into the racist comments Hailey makes. Like how she has to face the injusticeof the racism her classmates have everyday.
While I am not black, and therefore haven't experienced the fear Starr has, I particularly relate to her private school environment. I go to a school with mostly white people, and most of my friends are white (not that this is a bad thing). I hear little racist digs everyday, fortunately not from my own friends, like Starr had to deal with from Hailey. I'd like to think I would stand up to someone who made such blatantly racist comments to my face, but I really don't know. I hope I'll take Starr's example and cut all the toxic, racist people out of my life.
The Hate U Give is an extremely powerful book. Yes, the writing isn't the best thing I've ever read, but it deals with unjustified murders and the duality of a black neighborhood and a white one; it deals with the effects of racism, not just the large-scale kind, but also the under-the-surface type; and it deals with all of this racism, social injustice, and blatant prejudice. This book does all of this by balancing it with Starr's typical teenage life (over-protective older brother, prom, losing your virginity). This emphasizes the humanity of marginalized groups after society has so dehumanized them. The Hate U Give is a book we need in our world today. Read it.
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