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Jul 14, 2018deebitner rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
When I started this book, I wasn’t yet aware that it’s soon going to be a movie. I’m glad I read the book before that, not because I don’t expect the movie to be good but because this is such an amazingly well-written work that it feels only right to have read it first. I am going to tell you up front this is a hard read, especially if you’re white. But it is absolutely essential, heartbreaking, and if it doesn’t stir you to act I don’t want to know you. Starr is a high schooler going to a private school well outside of her neighborhood. She has always lived in that area, and her father was once a gang member of some notoriety. He has decided to get out, though, and he wants to be sure the same life doesn’t ensnare his children. That’s all well and good, except that it has essentially divided his daughter’s life into white neighborhood life and black hood life, and as the story starts this is already causing her trouble. When a party she’s attending starts to go bad, Starr gets a ride with her childhood buddy Khalil. They are pulled over by a police officer and Khalil is murdered right in front of her. Her home neighborhood is overwhelmed by unsurprising anger; the white kids at her school talk about protesting. But when she finds out they just want to get out of school she is enraged in her turn. To complicate matters, Starr has been hiding her white boyfriend from her Dad, and the fact that she is the young woman who was with Khalil from her school. The Hate U Give has so much to teach about listening to marginalized people. It’s obviously modelled in some ways on what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, but its message encompasses far more than that. It raises a lot of questions that white people, including me, need to answer for ourselves about our motivations and the way we co-opt marginalized peoples’ struggles to make ourselves feel better about how we treat them. Are we in fact serving them by drowning out their voices with ours? This book comes down clearly on the side of “No,” and it marshals strong arguments in its favor. Not limiting herself to portraying police brutality or challenging white people, Thomas meditates on friendship, on family (and Starr’s is a complex example), on gangs and the purpose they serve, and much more. I know that I missed out on volumes of subtext, since I’m white and middle-aged. That’s OK. I am not the intended audience for this book. I hope they love it as much as I did. If the movie is half as good as this book it will be a worthwhile view. I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone willing to challenge their prejudices. Five of five stars.