The Hate U Give
2017
- black lives matter
- fiction
- national book awards longlist
- race relations
- african american teenagers
- police shootings
- witnesses
- police-community relations
- juvenile fiction
- young adult fiction
The story
The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting. The Hate U Give was published on February 28, 2017, by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, which had won a bidding war for the rights to the novel. The book was a commercial success, debuting at number one on The New York Times young adult best-seller list, where it remained for 50 weeks. It won several awards and received critical praise for Thomas's writing and timely subject matter. In writing the novel, Thomas attempted to expand readers' understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as difficulties faced by black Americans who employ code switching. These themes, as well as the vulgar language, attracted some controversy and caused the book to be one of the most challenged books of 2017 and 2018 according to the American Library Association.
What it’s like
Plainspoken, rapid first-person voice, with sharp teenage humor and a constant awareness of who is listening, so the prose shifts between a neighborhood's slang and a private school's polish. Scenes are mostly domestic and close: kitchen-table family dinners, a corner store, a car ride home, a school hallway, a bedroom where a girl types out her thoughts. The sensory world is warm and specific, with the sounds of a crowded house and the tension of a city street, and the emotional register swings between banter and dread. Its pacing is steady and conversational for most of the book, then tightens sharply in its middle and late stretches, when the stakes press in and the quiet of a night can turn frightening. The intensity is substantial: a police shooting of a young man is witnessed directly and described in clear, painful detail, there is grief, threats, and street violence, a riot later on, and frequent profanity. It is not gratuitous, but it is not gentle. The book suits a reader who wants an engaged, emotionally direct story about identity, family and justice, and it especially fits those who appreciate a strong teen narrator and conversational prose.
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