Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Title: The Hate U Give

Author: Angie Thomas

Format: Paperback, UK, 448 pages

Published on: February 28th 2017

Publisher: Walker Books

Edition Language: English

ISBN: 978-1-4063-7728-6

Blurb:

What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed.

“Angie Thomas has written a stunning, brilliant, gut-wrenching novel that will be remembered as a classic of our time.” JOHN GREEN

Review:

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

The Hate U Give tells about the story of an African-American teenage girl named Starr Carter. She lives in Garden Heights, which is a poor neighbourhood filled mostly with black people while attending the luxurious and largely-white private school called Williamson Prep. Everything works just fine, until one summer, her childhood best friend, Khalil, is unjustly shot and killed by a white police officer. Her life is changed. The novel follows Starr as she transforms her trauma and grief into activism.

On my 4th semester in college, Extensive Reading class to be exact, we were asked to write a summary of a fiction book. I chose this book. What I am going to write down here are copied from my paper, which is mostly the summary of the novel, so it might contain some spoilers. 

The novel opens with Starr attending a spring-break party with her friend, Kenya, whose brother shares the same father with her. Starr met Khalil, her old childhood friend whom she hadn’t met for six years. They have just started catching up, then Starr knows that Khalil has become a drug dealer to pay for her grandmother’s cancer treatment. Suddenly, they hear several gunshots from a gang who then shuts the party over. After that, Khalil offers Starr a ride home. On their way home, they talk about their current life and looking back at also stories about them as children. Suddenly, a police officer pulled them over for driving with a broken taillight. Starr keeps her hand visible, just like what her father once told her, but Khalil doesn’t. He keeps asking the police officer (who then Starr calls One-Fifteen, based on his badge number) several times the reason why he pulled them over. Then, the officer pats Khalil down and walks back to his car. When Khalil looks at Starr over the car window to asked her whether she is okay, the police officer shot him three times, and Starr watches him die.

Starr’s parents were shocked after knowing what their daughter has encountered. Looking at how terrible Starr’s grief has become, they decided to hide her identity to the media as the sole witness of the night’s event. When Starr was 10 years old, she also experienced losing her best friend, Natasha, who was killed by an unknown shot from a gang while they were in a public swimming pool. Meanwhile, Khalil's death goes viral. But he is popularly known as a suspected drug dealer, not the unarmed black teenage boy who was shot by a white officer. Starr is caught in the middle between the protesters in the street and her friends at school. She cannot tell anybody about this, while her best friends keep talking about it all week.

Moreover, after it is heard that Khalil deals drugs for King, everything just gets messier. The gang is destructive. Starr’s father, Maverick, is a former gang member. Maverick’s father was the leader of the gang and insisted him to join. Maverick even spent time in prison so that he could get out from the street life. King, who happens to be Maverick’s son’s mother’s boyfriend, is the current leader of the destructive gang who effectively runs the neighbourhood. To make sure Starr stays silent, they keep putting Starr’s family in constant danger. They stone the house and fire shots near the neighbourhood. Then, tensions arise between Maverick and his brother-in-law Carlos; Carlos was Starr’s first father figure while Maverick was locked up. The tense situation is further complicated because Carlos is a cop serving on the same force as the officer who shot Khalil. Torn between the protective impulse he feels for Starr and the loyalty he has towards his career, Carlos wants to convince Starr that not all police officers are corrupt or bad.

As time goes by, however, she has become more aware of her identity, that she must be vocal in voicing what is right and what is wrong. Starr finds her bravery, serving as part of the police department’s investigation, speaking to the local defense attorney, and hiring a lawyer from a local activist group. Anyway, it doesn’t make any change. One-Fifteen is still free working at the office. Until when Starr and her best friends see an interview of the officer’s father defending him, Starr fights back for Khalil’s justice by appearing on a nationally-televised interview, but still with her face hidden.

The tensions and feuds running through the novel come to a head when a long time after, the grand jury still fails to indict the officer who shot Khalil. Starr joins the protests and riots erupt in Garden Heights to keep fighting for justice upon Khalil. Because no matter how much you have struggled to get something that you believe is right, sometimes life is a cold man who never let you get it.

Meanwhile, King takes advantage of the chaos to set fire to Maverick’s store while Starr, her boyfriend Chris, and his brother Seven are trapped inside to take a rest after the protest. With Maverick’s help, they manage to escape. The neighbourhood turns on King, getting him arrested for drug-dealing, removing him from the neighbourhood’s gang scene and ending his abuse towards Kenya and Seven’s mother.

In the end, Starr knows that the most important thing is to keep doing and saying the right things. Starr makes a promise to Khalil’s memory: she won’t remain silent and will continue fighting against injustice.

This was such a powerful book. I loved how the author writes a scene in a very detailed way--it makes the story tenser. The moral of the story is also the best thing about this book: about racism, discrimination, injustice, friendship, and even family. I would recommend this to everyone.