The Hate U Give

Title : The Hate U Give

Author: Angie Thomas

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction

Published: Balzer + Bray February 28, 2017

My Rating: 5/5

“Once upon a time there was a hazel-eyed boy with dimples. I called him Khalil. The world called him a thug.”

Synopsis

The Hate U Give follows Starr, an Afro-American teenage girl, in her journey to realizing what it means to be a person of color in today’s world after her best friend is shot by a white police officer.

Review

Angie Thomas’ does a marvelous job educating the readers on racial profiling, the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, systematic racism, and otherism. And while the story is painful and brutally honest, there is also a lot of warmth and love from all the love and support Starr receives from her family and community, and it isn’t lost on me that it might have been done this way to fight the “absent daddy” stereotype associated to certain communities. If there is something news outlets are good at is dehumanizing people to spread fear, but with every struggle Starr and the community goes through, there is a lot more love and people trying to fight for what is right. I never knew a book would be able to break my heart and warm it at the same time.

I cannot recommend this book enough.  Angie Thomas is a superb story teller and everything about this book is absolute perfection. There is nothing I can write about The Hate U Give that will do it justice, so instead I’m going to post some of the quotes that really had an impact on me:

“That’s the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there’s nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.”

“Funny. Slave masters thought they were making a difference in black people’s lives too. Saving them from their “wild African ways.” Same shit, different century. I wish people like them would stop thinking that people like me need saving.”