The Hate U Give: A Printz Honor Winner

I couldn’t put this book down. The best book I’ve read in quite some time. This book should be read by everyone.

One of my favorite books, absolutely love and recommend!!

This is a first-hand look at the experiences of people directly involved with the tragic killing of Black men and women by White police officers, and Ms. Thomas draws us into the story in a way that we can empathize with everyone involved. It’s one thing to read news reports about such events, but we don’t often get a real understanding of the issues challenging a poor black community.Poverty that makes the temptation to get with a gang and make money selling drugs hard to resist.Living in such a neighborhood that makes everyone a suspect in the eyes of police.Fear of the gangs that makes a person just want to duck their head and pretend that everything is okay.Living with the danger of drive-by shootings and other violence of the inner city.As I read the story and shared with Starr the absolute horror of seeing her friend get shot, I could empathize, but only to a point. We, mostly White folks, who have never had to listen to The Talk, or see what Starr had to see, have no idea. Not really. Racism is so complicated, and the Black community experiences things we will just never know first-hand.The push-pull between Starr’s wanting to speak out and fear of doing so, was so real. And I loved what her mother said at one point, “Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”At first I didn’t understand why the author chose to have Starr and her brothers go to a school in an affluent White neighborhood, but as the contrasts between her life and theirs came clearer and clearer, I got it. The cluelessness of one of her school friends about racism in the past and present, reflects the positions of so many people today who want to just erase the injustices and pretend they never happened. “We can just be friends.”The characters are nicely drawn, and it was nice to hear distinct voices. Each spoke in a way that reflected their past and education, and Starr worked hard to leave her “ghetto” speak at home when she went to school. That contrast added another layer to the story, as does her relationship with a White boyfriend, Chris. During the aftermath from the killing of Starr’s friend, she and Chris have to explore their feelings for each other in a way they never had to before.The Hate U Give isn’t always an easy read, but it it an important one. We as a society can’t ignore the facts of racism and how it affects so many people, and this book give us those facts in an engrossing story with a wonderful main character. I highly recommend it.

The thing with “The Hate U Give” is that it’s supposed to be fictional, but this story is not fiction in the slightest. The things Starr experiences, what happened to Khalil, are real, they do happen, they are still happening. Which makes this book so hard to both read and review because it becomes really difficult to separate fiction from reality. Which is probably the point. Starr witnesses not one, but two of her friend’s violent murders. Even though the focus is primarily on Khalil, Starr grew up no stranger to violence. The opening chapter is her at a party that she has to flee because of shots being fired. This is Starr’s reality; she is torn between the community she grew up in and being “black enough” to fit in to these types of parties, and then the preppy, very white private school she attends where she can’t be “too black”. Even though Starr is not a real person, her situation is not fictional. Neither is Khalil’s where, no matter what, he should never have been murdered by a cop. Which is why I do think that this book is very important to read, I just don’t think it’s all that appropriate for younger YA readers.The first half of the book (after the first 2 chapters) was hard for me to get into, not because of the message or the horror that Starr witnesses, mainly it was kind of slow and some of the contemporary aspects don’t age well as trends change. I also found Starr’s school to be overly stereotypical, and a lot of the characters to be rather hypocritical, especially where Chris is concerned. The idea that sending Starr and her siblings to a different school to keep them safe when the violence they witnessed wasn’t centered at their school didn’t always track with me, either. But that’s not why I’d hesitate to give this to a younger reader: this book is heavy. “The Hate U Give” focuses on more than just police brutality, it focuses on addiction in a community under siege from a very active drug dealer and his gang, there are also instances of abuse against kids and adults, and that’s on top of the utter devastation that is Starr’s grief during her tremendous ordeal of trying to get justice for Khalil. It’s just something to keep in mind when you are considering having your younger readers pick up this book.The character dynamics are all messy in a very real way, and I really enjoyed that. Every relationship is complex, important, and rewarding in its own way. But I really loved Starr’s family, and how Starr pushes back against Kenya when she keeps dismissing that Seven is Starr’s brother too. I also have siblings where we share a dad and not a mom, so Starr’s feelings over Seven and his relationship with his other sisters and how that made Starr feel was beautiful, and also important. Honestly, this book is full of important messages beyond just the main plot line! It’s a very complex story line in that regard with a lot going on (another reason this may not be great for younger readers).For as much as is happening in this book with subplots and complex topics around race, family, and friend dynamics, there may have been too much going on that required deeper focus. The ending was both disappointing and beautiful. It’s realistic which is really sad and infuriating, but then you have these sprinklings of hope and a type of happy ending for Starr with Mav finally listening to Lisa about what was best for their family. Plus there is closure and new beginnings for Starr and her friends, as well as what will become of Garden Heights. All of that gets wrapped up in just a few chapters which felt too quick given the importance of those subplots. So it left me feeling… confused. Which, like I originally said, makes this book so hard to review because the story structure wasn’t the best in my opinion, but the fact that many of the topics in this story are not works of fiction… It’s really that first half of the book though that keeps me from loving this novel as much as I wanted to. This story is powerful, it needs to be told and to be shared and discussed, just like all the other books (fiction and nonfiction alike) that discuss these topics. Just some tell the fiction side of things better in my opinion.

This is the perfect time in our society to read The Hate U Give. The book is based on justice for black people which goes along perfectly with the Black Lives Matter movement and protests that are happening today. The book is written from Starr Carter’s point of view. Starr and her friend Khalil Harris are driving home from a party together when they are, without any reason, pulled over by a police officer. Khalil is shot by the police officer because he was thought to have a gun with him, but that gun was a hairbrush, and the police officer continues to point the gun at Starr while he calls for backup. The truth is that, because Starr and Khalil are black, the police officer automatically assumed they were doing something wrong. But they were only two kids driving home, and Khalil deserved to live. Starr is a sixteen-year-old black high school student whose life is split in two. On one side, she’s a girl who lives in a black neighborhood, Garden Heights, surrounded by her black community. On the other side, she is one of the only few black people at her “rich people”, primarily white, private high school, Williamson Prep. She has two brothers, the oldest being Seven, and the youngest Sekani. Seven is her half-brother. Starr and Seven share the same father but have different mothers. Starr shares her brother Seven with Kesha, Seven’s half-sister, who grew up being friends with Starr. Her father, Maverick (a.k.a. “Big Mav”), owns a grocery store in Garden Heights and her mother, Lisa, is a nurse. Mrs. Carter drives Seven, Starr, and Sekani forty-five minutes to school each day so they can go to a good school. Starr struggles as she feels like she must act differently depending on who she's with- her white boyfriend, Chris, and her white friends that go to Williamson, or her childhood friends and family that live in Garden Heights. After Khalil is murdered, she feels she must speak out, even though it takes her a while to realize, and she could be in danger in the process. I love Angie Thomas’s writing style in The Hate U Give. She is writing from Starr’s point of view, so she writes exactly how everyone in the book would talk. She uses slang, and things that are popular in our culture today which makes this book especially enjoyable for young people to read. She even uses lyrics from songs that were popular in 2018. As a teenager, the way Thomas writes helps me relate to Starr. I think this book is great to read. It’s entertaining, heart-breaking, funny at times, and I feel like I learned many lessons from it. I will never understand what life is like for someone like Starr. It is a sad and broken world we live in, and life is not fair. I personally love reading when I find a good book, but I have friends that don’t like reading and they really enjoyed this book. There is never a dull moment. I was never bored while reading this book. It was powerful, inspiring, and I was intrigued all the way through. In my opinion, this book is a best seller because it discusses cultural conflicts in an informative yet entertaining way that makes you want to never put the book down. So many people can relate to Starr’s story on a personal level. This book is fiction, but everything in it has occurred more times that it should.