The Hate U Give

To add context I am half white and half black. Most of my family comes from the projects/ghetto even my white family.

I'm giving this a 3.75/5 stars. I really enjoyed the black culture aspect of this and thought it was very accurate to real life. The things the characters would say and even how they talked is very realistic. I also enjoyed how drug and gang activity was shown and talked about in a respectful way. The characters were so amazing and had me laughing my butt off. Starr is amazing and I love her family, especially her brother. The family aspect is very strong in this book and I like how it spreads to more than just immediate family which is pretty accurate as well. The pop culture references were also fantastic. There is also the aspect of Starr having a white boyfriend and interacting with white people that added an interesting dynamic to the book that I really enjoyed. It showed how people of different races who have extreme cultural differences can fight, get torn apart, but also get along

The reason I knocked this down over a whole star is because this book is supposed to stand up against racism when some of the lines it says are racist towards white people. I really don't understand that in today's culture. It may be accurate but so is the gang stuff and one is seen as okay and the other is negative. I don't get why black people think they are the only people to ever be enslaved. Irish slaves were the first slaves sent to America. And what about Jews. They have been persecuted time and time again and you don't see them rioting and destroying their own cities, as well as talking bad about another race. Just because our ancestors were enslaved by other people's ancestors doesn't mean that we have the right to talk ill of them. I am in no way saying we should just get over it. We should fight for what our ancestors believed and fought so hard for because there is still racism in this world. But Black people can be racist too and that is just fighting fire with fire. I see more racism towards white people these days than coming from them.

I just felt like this book basically added to that and almost promoted it in a way. I also found the Black Jesus thing super annoying because like Jesus doesn't have a race if you believe in him. Basically, in this book, the main character's family would always refer to Jesus as Black Jesus and had portraits of ‘Black Jesus' Also, the fact that the actual historical figure came from the middle east proves that most likely he wasn't the majority black. So just because you want to promote your race doesn't mean that you can change the race of historical/biblical figures.

Overall I think this book is good and has a good message but it has problems that not many people talk about and bring up big political and social issues, that nobody talks about. All lives matter.