The Hate U Give

“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”

This reading experience was very emotional. I found Starr and her family very compelling as characters. I'm glad I waited until the hype died down to read it so I could enjoy it unclouded by the different opinions.

I will start by saying that I don't believe it would be an exaggeration to say this is one of the most important books I have ever read.

Before reading this novel I read Blackkklansman (another enjoyable read, just more informational/historical) and I think the major difference between the two and the punch they pack is that it's not just about seeing the N* word written out in quotes or the sheet wearing racists...it's about seeing the system that holds them together empowering them.

That is not to say that it is without faults, or that it is the best writing of all time, but it is a homage to racial problems in America in a perspective that I had not experienced.

I believe that kids in school should be given this as part of actual curriculum and that discussions should be urged more regularly on the topic of race. I feel like we still treat race as if it's shameful or secretive, and therefore, kept quiet. To me, that's what this book opened the doors to.
It is as much a story about a coming of age as it is a story about unbelievable trauma. You not only feel with Starr, you grow with her and learn along the way. It is a story about not judging a book by its cover (sorry) as seen through the unjust deaths of unarmed black teens (often portrayed in media as thugs without any concept of where or who they've been), the powerful fathering from an ex-con, and the unwavering support from an uncle who happens to be a cop. It's a story that describes race, racism, a systematic prejudice in a way only a minority can. This book is an opportunity to see through the eyes of someone that is not like you, and to actually understand the weight of that difference. I found that to be an invaluable lesson I had not received elsewhere.

I thought it's aim to describe racism, prejudice, capitalism, and poverty in a systematic way—a system that clearly needs remodeling!—was absolutely a success.
For that I give it 5*s

THE HATE U GIVE LITTLE INFANTS FUCKS EVERYBODY

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I'll be honest, the hype around this one turned me off initially. It just didn't seem like my kind of thing. But my wife bought a copy and tore through it and started telling everyone she came across that they needed to read it (especially those of us she lives with). When I saw the library had a copy of the audiobook, I snagged it, because I hadn't got that far on my TBR. By this time, I only remembered “YA,” “something about Black Lives Matter,” and “Mrs. Irresponsible Reader said I needed to.” Which is about as tabula rasa as one could get when coming to a book.

Our central character is Starr Carter. She attends a very nice private school in the suburbs of whatever unidentified city she lives in. She plays basketball there, has friends and a boyfriend and seems to be generally well-regarded by all. Then there's her “other life”, that has almost no relation to that one – she and her family live in a poor neighborhood where almost no one knows her by anything but “Mav's daughter what works at the store” (or something close to that). She has a friend or two in the neighborhood, but mostly works and then goes home. On one of the rare nights she goes out to do something social, she runs into her childhood best friend, Khalil, who she hasn't seen for a few months. Their reunion is cut short, sadly, while he drives her home and they're pulled over by a police officer for a routine traffic stop. I'll leave the details for you to read on your own, but essentially, her unarmed friend is shot repeatedly by the police officer in front of Starr.

In the days that follow Khalil's death is a nationwide story, Starr's being questioned by the police and is trying to keep her psyche intact while the wheels of justice grind slowly. There are problems at school, unforeseen challenges at home and in the neighborhood, add in the involvement with the criminal justice system and activists, and it's clear that neither of Starr's lives are going to be the same again.

Yes, this book is about the shooting of Khalil and the aftermath. But it's about more than that, too. Similar to the way you could say that To Kill a Mockingbird is about the trial Tom Robinson and its aftermath. There's a whole lot of other things going on in both books that are just as much a part of the essence as the shooting/trial. There's family growth and change, individual characters learning more about the world and changing, there's the evolution of localities and best of all, there are characters taking all of this in and exercising a little agency to change themselves – and impact everything in around them.

One thing I didn't expect was how fun this book would end up being. I laughed a lot – her father's strange theories about Harry Potter, her Fresh Prince of Bel Air obsession, the teasing between her friends, her family's very cut-throat approach to watching the NBA finals and trying to jinx each other's teams, are just a start. Even when it's not being out-and-out funny, there's a joie de vivre that characterizes the lives of these characters.

When they're not grieving, being threatened (by criminals or those who are supposed to be protecting them from criminals), being angered at the way that the system seems to be destined to fail them, or scared about their lives, that is. Because there's a lot of that, too. All of which is justified. The interplay between the emotional extremes speaks volumes to the authenticity of Thomas' work, and makes it much more effective than it could've been in less careful hands.

There are so few YA novels with healthy – or existing families – that Thomas should probably win an award or three just for having so many in one book. None of the families are perfect (though Starr's comes close), some push the boundaries of “dysfunctional” into something we need a new word for; but at the very least there were at least a core of people caring about each other and trying to help each other, in their own way.

Yes, there are political overtones – or at least ramifications – to this book, but this is first and foremost a human story and can be appreciated by humans from all over the political spectrum. Thomas, as far as I can tell, went out of her way to be fair and balanced. It'd have been very easy to paint some of these characters/groups as all evil, all good, all misunderstood, all [fill in the blank]. Instead, she took the more difficult, more honest, and much more interesting approach and filled the book with people all over the moral spectrum, no matter their profession, ethnicity, socio-economic background, education, etc.

A few words about Turpin's work. I loved it. She was just fantastic, and rose to the challenge of bringing this kind of book to life. Looking at her credits just now, that doesn't seem like much of a stretch for her – she's clearly a talented heavy-hitter on the audiobook front.

I laughed, I cried . . . it moved me. This is the whole package, really. It'll challenge you, it'll entertain you, and give you a little hope for tomorrow (while helping you despair about the time until tomorrow comes).

El tema principal de este libro a mí parecer, que fue lo que más me hizo pensar, es el racismo en la actualidad que sigue presente por más que se piense lo contrario. Se plantea esta temática a través de la historia de una joven que se encontraba presente en el asesinato de su amigo de la infancia a mano de un oficial de policía. Esta situación causa mucha controversia en toda la comunidad, ya que murió a sangre fría y sin presentar en ningún momento un acto de violencia por parte del asesinado. Pero la policía promueve por medio de la televisión lo contrario, lo que hace que todos los personajes actúen y vayan educándose más con respecto a el racismo y las formas de expresar su dolor ante la injusticia.

Yo, personalmente, nunca he leído un libro como este que me haya movido tanto. Me di cuenta de muchas cosas sociales presentes en cada país pero con diferentes minorías que son las que más se ven afectadas por los movimientos gubernamentales. Me pareció una visión única dentro de la literatura para jóvenes adultos dentro de la categoría Contemporánea. Fue una maravilla encontrar este tipo de información promovida para que se lea.

La perspectiva de esta historia es totalmente social, podemos pensar también que tiene algo de perspectiva histórica, ya que es una situación que se viene repitiendo durante años, quizás a menor escala pero igual. Y también podemos pensar que tiene aspectos psicológicos porque realmente se puede ver en la narrativa cada detalle desde el sentimiento hasta la forma de construcción de un pensamiento moralista.



Leer más...

This is the story of 16-year-old Starr, a girl who witnesses her life-long friend get killed by a police officer while unarmed. She balances between two worlds while the murder makes national news: the one where she lives surrounded by non-traditional families and neighbors who've seen it all and gangbangers and business owners in a black community filled with people whose choices are never easy, and the one where she goes to a mostly-white private school at which she becomes a completely different version of herself so nobody knows about her home world. But it's so much more than that. And that's why I am going to ask people who can't relate to this story to read it as soon as they possibly can.The reason I believe reading books by people who aren't your and your experience's doppelgänger is important is because it allows us to pluck at the threads of truth about other peoples' lives, experiences, secrets at our own pace and in our own heads as we go along (note: I am white). We get to know them, see them, emotionally connect with them. Read enough of these stories, and we become able to see the real people in our world who are represented by those characters. We become more empathetic to and more understanding of their situations, even when they are so vastly different from our own that our knee-jerk reactions to their real-life words/actions/decisions tend to be denial, rejection. A disbelief because it doesn't seem right or doesn't feel comfortable.

Reading these stories connects us in a way our world needs right now. I can't say I can relate but I have been bullied and made to feel that being different is a bad thing and this book makes me want people to be more accepting and be more accepted.

Everyone in America should read The Hate U Give before graduating high school. For someone like me who grew up in white America, this feels similar to Between the World and Me: it's not really my place to critique a book like this, since it's such an intimate look at growing up black in America that any critiques would just be a critique of the black experience. If you're white and are relatively new to conversations about race, or if you're not sure you agree with the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a great book to pick up and learn from. It's pretty breezy and you could knock it out in a weekend.

Note on the age-appropriateness of the subject matter if you weren't aware: there's a good amount of profanity throughout, as well as teenage sexuality, drug dealing, and violence. I would say that this shows police brutality and that we should be sure that kids don't have to engage with that, but then again, that's the whole point: America lets kids in certain neighborhoods deal with police brutality all the time, and it needs to change. Black Lives Matter.

I can't really say I enjoyed this story, and that's for a number of reasons. The plot of this book focuses on Starr, who was with a black boy named Khalil when he is murdered by a white police officer. Throughout the book, she has to deal with the trauma of that and with, basically, living in a racist society and bringing together two different worlds - she goes to a wealthy, all-white school yet lives in an all-black “hood.” Starr goes through a lot, and it's tough and dark and unpleasant. She has good times with friends and family, of course, but there's a lot of darkness here. I guess I had two main issues with this book. One would be that the darkness, the trauma, is handled almost casually, and when Starr does have outbursts, it feels over-the-top. This book is taking on a very complex issue that is intertwined in our culture in more ways than can be described, and yet there's little nuance or subtlety reflected in this story. I think the reason for that is due to my second issue with the book: I really disliked the writing. It felt stilted, unedited, shallow, amateur. In creative writing classes I've taken, professors would always say, “Show, don't tell.” All this book does is tell. The language is clunky and unpolished. It was seriously a chore to read this book, and every time I went to pick it up, I was not excited due solely to the poor writing. I feel bad saying this because I think this story is important and should be told and should be published and should be read, but this may be some of the worst writing I've encountered.

A very powerful read. You gotta give props to anybody who speaks up and this book is a representation of that.
It educates on the struggle the black community faces everyday and the consequences it has on their lives.

Good plot, the majority of the elements for a good book are there, but there was something missing and if I had to put my finger on it would definitely be the way the book is written. And that's the only reason it only gets 3 stars.

“‘Funny. Slave masters thought they were making a different 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.'”
this book is so fucking important. everyone in the whole world needs to read this. this gives the reader a lot of insight on the black lives matter movement and what is actually means. i must say, THUG opened my mind up a lot.