posted on 19 Apr 2018

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This novel (aimed at young adults but it will appeal to plenty of older readers too) has had a lot of publicity, mostly in relation to how it shines a light on the real lives of an inner city black community, fictionalised as ‘Garden Heights’. A big part of its success is that it is unflinching in the way that it describes menacing gang members, the sadness of lives affected by drugs and alcohol and the casual violence that seems to seep everywhere. Add to this the fatal shooting of an unarmed sixteen year old boy (Khalil) by a white police officer, and the subsequent closing of official ranks, and it is a chillingly topical read. All of this is clearly hinted at on the book cover itself with the obvious links to the BlackLivesMatter campaign that has been so prominent in the last couple of years.

Starr, the young female protagonist has been brought up by her parents to be keenly aware of social injustice through respecting the many ikons of black political history like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Huey Newton.   Music is at the heart of the community where she lives, particularly the enduring influence of the fierce lyrics by the rapper Tupac, which gives the book its title.

From the beginning of the story, Starr is torn between feeling comfortable about living in Garden Heights and being one of the few black students at Williamson private school in a different part of the city where her parents have sent her and her two brothers to give them a better chances. She finds this dual life confusing:

‘God. Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it’.

She gradually reveals her complicated back story which includes being born in a very poor area of the city and having a dad (Big Mav) who was in prison for three years for gang related crimes. She now has a close loving relationship with him as he is a proud family man and a thoroughly reformed character who owns a successful grocery business in the heart of the community. One of Big Mav’s  other early troubles included having a child ( Seven) with Iesha, a very damaged woman who now lives with her other two children in a relationship with King, a nasty bully who is the local drug Baron. I must confess that this was one of those novels where a family tree at the beginning would have been quite helpful, especially because the importance of family is so central to the plot.

Starr has been sent to Williamson because at the age of ten she witnessed a drive-by shooting of her best friend, Natasha. Nobody was ever arrested for this murder and it is her first experience of suspecting that crimes in the black community might not be as well investigated as they should be. She is completely scarred by this earlier tragedy and often remembers her friend with great affection and sorrow. Like many other children living in Garden Heights, she has also been warned to be very wary and careful with the police, even though her uncle Carlos is a detective. At the age of twelve, Big Mav explained what to do if she was ever stopped by a cop:

’Keep your hands visible. Don’t make any sudden moves. Only speak when they speak to you.’

But carrying out this wise advice proves to be no use at all when she is the only witness to the shooting of Khalil who was a close childhood friend who she hasn’t seen around for a while.  After the shooting she has the gun turned on her while the cop waits for help. Her outrage and disbelief at the way in which Khalil is then framed to be partly responsible for his own death because of his background and possible connections with drugs, eventually persuades her to appear with her evidence before a grand jury. This is a brave decision and not one that she comes to easily, but once she is fired up it is clear that she will continue the struggle for justice even if the cop is let off.

This is a passionate book which had me gripped from the first few pages right through the many frightening episodes that followed. I think that the reason that I felt so involved and angry about what was happening was because of all the energetic ordinary life that was always going on around the edges. Starr enjoys hanging out with her friends, spending time with her boyfriend and joshing about and arguing with her family. She sort of resents working in her dad’s grocery store but at the same time she treasures the time that it gives her alone with him. The neighbourhood is a very poor one with plenty of problems but it is full of kind people who always look out for each other, and that somehow balances out the less salubrious stuff.

In the author’s note at the end of the story, Angie Thomas explains that the murder of Oscar Grant in 2009 by the cops made her realise that the racist lynching of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955 was still horrifically relevant. That inspired her to write this, originally as a short story and then as a novel as a way of adding her voice to the campaign for justice, although there have been many more similar murders since:

‘But my ultimate hope is that every single person who reads The Hate U Give walks away from it understanding those feelings and sharing them in some way. And then, maybe then, Emmett Louis Till can truly become history’.

Karen Argent

April 2018