Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give 

by Angie Thomas

I first found this book when I was researching book trailers last year. The trailer was so compelling that I immediately jumped over to Goodreads and put it on my to read list. Sadly, I forgot about it and never picked it up, until now.

(Fan made book trailer can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuCNYnt--sA )

There is a trailer for a movie as well. I have not seen the movie, but the review of it sounded to me like there was quite a lot of divergence between the book and the movie. Honestly, if you’ve seen the movie, PLEASE give the book a chance. You’ll get so much more out of it, I’m willing to bet.

Recent events made me start looking for a book to read that would take me inside the perspective of a contemporary black woman. I saw this one and remembered how much I had wanted to read it.

The wonderful thing about fiction is the way it can take you inside someone else’s head and help you not only see what they see but feel what they feel. You can be inside their existence and experience a level of empathy that you may not be able to experience any other way. It makes the information and feelings more accessible. 

Starr is a high school girl at a party where she doesn’t feel comfortable. She comes across an old friend, Khalil.

“I feel like I’m ten again, standing in the basement of Christ Temple Church, having my first kiss with him at Vacation Bible School.”

They are just chatting and catching up when a fight breaks out and a gun is fired. They don’t stop to find out what is going on, they run with everyone else.

“I don’t try to see who got shot or who did it. You can’t snitch if you don’t know anything.”

They escape, and are headed home, listening to some music, when they get pulled over by the police. Khalil is annoyed and Starr is scared. He tries to reassure her that it’s going to be alright, but when he opens the car door to check on Starr, the cop shoots him. (The cop later claims he thought the hairbrush in the pocket of the door was a gun.) Starr watches Khalil die. Then the cop holds the gun on her until back up arrives.

Her parents come and get her. She is sick and numb.

“I’m lying in bed. Khalil is lying in the county morgue. That’s where Natasha ended up too. It happened six years ago, but I still remember everything from that day.”

Starr had watched another friend die. Natasha was killed in a drive by shooting by a gang member as the two of them played in the water from a fire hydrant on a hot day. The three of them had been friends. “Tighter than the inside of Voldemort’s nose.”

“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.”

At first they try to keep it quiet that Starr is the witness, she doesn’t even tell her friends at school, but as situations and events pile up, she steps forward.

We see the warmth of a close-knit family, and the traditions echoed in communities everywhere, taking food to the home of the bereaved grandmother after she loses her beloved grandson.

“Cameron holds his grandma’s hand as he leads her into the living room like she’s the queen of the world in a housecoat. She looks thinner, but strong for somebody going through chemo and all of this. A scarf wrapped around her head adds to her majesty – an African queen, and we’re blessed to be in her presence. The rest of us stand.”

I love the way we get to know all different types of people in the book who are multi-dimensional. There’s Starr’s older brother, Seven, and her younger brother Sekani. Her father, Big Mav, and her mother, Lisa. There’s a list of characters too big to name in a little book review, it’s a whole neighborhood and then some, but it never gets unmanageable. Sometimes it gets confusing when authors introduce too many people, but not here. Thomas introduces them one by one into the action with situations and characteristics that make them stand on their own like real people.

There are so many facets to the story, I couldn’t possibly cover them all here, but she tackles it all beautifully. Starr’s uncle, Carlos, is a cop himself. Starr is dating a white boy from her school named Chris, and they care very much about each other. Music is a major strand, the dating life of teens, social interactions, being one of the few black kids in a mostly white school her mother enrolled her in, and PTSD. The fear that Starr lived with that something bad could happen when they were stopped by a cop. The guilt Starr feels for living and for not speaking up right away. Thomas clearly depicts how Starr gets to the point where she wants to riot, but also sees the damage that the rioting does to her neighbors and neighborhood.

The gang activity in the community is a large part of the story, as the head of one gang is married to Seven’s mother. The story is never simple, and yet it is clearly told and easy to follow. We see the good and the bad in the neighborhood. How belonging to gangs can provide for people even as it contributes to the decay. The way the gangs are part of the community, like it or not. Starr’s father is the former head of a gang and went to jail for three years to get out of the gang. Thomas touches on the system of drugs, addiction, selling, jails, and poverty.

It is a very rich story that brings these characters beautifully to life. You half expect you could start driving and eventually pull up in front of their house.

I don’t think I have a single negative to give about this book. It is wonderful – insightful, accessible, and expressive. I want everyone to read it. If I could give it more than five stars I would. 

It is another solid example of why I say that some of the best authors out there are writing young adult literature and everyone should read some.