Breakaway Books

Authored by Angie Thomas; Published 2017; Fiction

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The Hate U Give is powerful. To remember that it was written years before Black Lives Matter only makes it more so, and I wish I had read it a long time ago.

In The Hate U Give, Starr lives in Garden Heights, but it’s not always a comfortable fit. When her parents start sending her to a private school in the suburbs, she becomes aware of just how different the lives of her neighbors in the Heights are from those of her classmates. Goaded into attending her first Garden Heights party, she reconnects with her old friend Khalil, only to witness his death at the hands of a police officer a few hours later. Starr then has to decide: How will she respond? Can she fight for Khalil? What can she really do to bring him justice?

Starr is the perfect narrator for this story—-an honest witness, exposed time after time to just how ugly racism is, in both big and small ways. She sees that Khalil did nothing to provoke being shot by a police officer, but she also sees how her white friend Hailee makes careless comments about other races and is never held accountable for it. She feels the discomfort, even the shame, of the state of her neighborhood when it’s introduced to her school friends, even while she longs for the support that the neighbors provide to each other. She sees the way that gangs control Garden Heights, as well as the circumstances that force young people to join them. Her bald descriptions of life in the Heights put me right there with her, asking exactly what she does: How can we make this better?

Starr is guided by her family, her friends, and her attorney to use her most powerful weapon—her voice. It is an inspiring message, combatting the cynicism that comes after years of shouting for justice. Her family’s devotion to their neighborhood, even after their business is burnt down and they are exposed to danger, is the thing that can better their community. Over and over, what stood out to me in the novel was the contrast in how Starr sees her neighbors and the place they live and how the media or her white classmates portray the same things. It was painful to watch her friendship with privileged, white Hailee dissolve and equally shocking to hear the comments that Hailee felt like she could make. The unfairness of branding Khalil as a thug and a drug dealer made my jaw drop, but this kind of messaging from the media appears time and time again in the novel. The gulf between Starr’s perception and others’ is eye-opening to say the least. It’s enough to make me skeptical about every news story I read.

Every American should read The Hate U Give. It’s a start to the empathy we need to learn for each other.