Both heartbreaking and illuminating, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas tells the story of Black teenager Starr, who witnesses the murder of her best friend at the hands of the police during a traffic stop. We are all too familiar with the role the police play in the lives (and deaths) of Black people, particularly Black men. This awful familiarity makes The Hate U Give hit hard. Thomas has written a searing account of how such deaths affect those closest to them and the bigger ramifications of a system that is designed to oppress and destroy.
The story is told solely through Starr’s eyes, which gives the book an intimate, urgent energy. Starr is part of two worlds: her Black community in a less affluent part of the city and the wealthy, privileged world of her primarily white classmates at the private school she attends. Thomas has a genius for portraying teenagers as they frequently are: passionate, vulnerable, strong-willed and brave. Starr embodies all these qualities. She passionately loves her family and community, but the tension between her experiences as a young Black woman and the careless confidence of her privileged school friends takes its toll. This tension is ratcheted up a hundred-fold after Starr becomes the only witness to her friend Khalil’s murder.
Starr initially hides that she saw the murder from her school friends, including her white boyfriend Chris. She explains at one point the difficulty of her position:
“I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in my brain so I’m Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang—if a rapper would say it, she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood.” Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the “angry black girl.” Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.”
As the city breaks out in numerous protests, she is burdened by guilt that her testimony to the police was not sufficient to punish the cop who killed her friend. She wrongly thinks this makes things her fault, so she hides she was the witness from her classmates and her own community. But over time, encouraged by her friends and close-knit, loving family, Starr begins to find her voice to express the horror and fear she feels, as well as her rage about the injustices her community has borne.
The Hate U Give brilliantly shows the systemic racism Black people experience, how society is structured to keep them oppressed, but how too Black people’s strength and resolve fights against it. But the book also shows the exhaustion and pain of living in this unjust system. And too, the intense love and righteous anger of her family and her community. The book’s strength is it shows everything: the characters and their world are presented in a nuanced, complex way. I loved her family so much; family is intensely important in this book.
I found The Hate U Give moving, enraging, and relatable. Thomas has a talent for dialogue and the inner workings of teenagers. Starr is a fully realized protagonist, and I felt the intimacy you feel when a character sort of melds with the reader. I was truly inside her world. I felt what she felt, I understood what she understood. As a white woman, it is not the Black community’s job to educate me or to be “relatable” so I can connect with their lives. But the book’s unflinching portrayal of what it really means to experience this kind of violence—set against the all-encompassing love that runs through Starr’s family life—educated me nonetheless. More than educated, the lives on the page felt absolutely real, so I felt privileged to be let in.
At one point, one of the characters explains what Tupac meant when he talked about Thug Life: “’Pac said Thug Life stood for ‘The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.'” Later, Starr’s father says, “That’s the hate they’re giving us baby, a system designed against us, that’s Thug Life.” This insightful book peels everything down to the bone, and the white reader would do well to pay attention, instead of pretending the violence and injustice is “out there,” It affects us all: as Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” But too, that Black life is not only juxtaposed against violence, but joy, community, the ups and downs of every family, life. Thomas’ book balances it all somehow. Many voices tell the story, but Starr’s voice is the center of it all.
As I wrote this review, I learned that another Black man has been killed at a traffic stop; the police shot him 60 times. This book is horrifyingly relevant over and over and over. But it is also a book of hope–about, as Thomas puts it, using your voice as a weapon to fight injustice. May we all use our voices to uplift each other and fight for what’s right.