Hey, everyone! I hope y'all are having a
great day, and today I'll be reviewing
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The Hate U Give is
Angie Thomas's debut novel, and it's been
garnering a lot of critical and
commercial success. So critics have been giving it so
much praise, but it's also been topping
the New York Times bestselling list for
young adult fiction. So it's, you know,
it's been everywhere. There's been a lot of
buzz. And in my opinion, the most
remarkable thing about this book is the
fact that it's basically a response to
the Black Lives Matter movement. So The
Hate U Give follows our protagonist named
Starr. She's in the passenger seat of her
black, male friend's car when they're
pulled over by a white cop, and this
exchange leaves her black, male friend
dead on the street and Starr just
emotionally scarred. And what follows
this incident is a media whirlwind, but
also an engaging and complicated
experience regarding family and
neighbors and friends and so much more.
Angie Thomas touches on a lot of
different subjects in this book and she
does so very effectively. And this book
is frustrating and painful, but also
funny and moving. It's frustrating and
heartbreaking to read because you're
reading about these situations in which
there is just blatant discrimination and
such a glaringly obvious lack of justice,
and what amplifies this frustration and
this heartbreak is the fact that this is
barely even fiction. It's highly
reflective of real life and that's the
rub. Because you can turn the last page
of this book and close it and you don't
feel relief. You might feel galvanized or
inspired or pained, but you can't brush
off the story like it's fantasy because
it's not. It's realistic fiction, with a
heavy emphasis on the first word. There's
a lot of really good stuff an Angie
Thomas's debut novel. Most obviously,
there's an excellent discussion on race
and socio-economic background. Starr lives
in an underprivileged, predominantly
black neighborhood, but goes to a private
school in a different neighborhood where
most of the students are predominantly
wealthy and white. She struggles with
portraying two different versions of
herself depending on the two different
audiences and she talks about how she
doesn't want those two spheres to
interfere with each other.
Less obvious is Thomas's great portrayal of
family. There are countless YA
novels where the parents are absent,
family's hardly ever mentioned, but in
this one, Starr's family is such an
important component both in Starr's real
life but also just in the novel itself.
Another thing Angie Thomas does well is
her depiction of a specific subculture.
She incorporates slang and songs and
gangs in a way that feels very real and
very immersive. It reminds me just a
little bit of the unapologetic way Junot
Diaz incorporates his experience into
his writing. The last thing I want to
mention is humor. As you might expect, this
is a pretty dark book for a lot of the
pages, but there are also really great
lines sprinkled throughout. This book is
painful, sure, but it's not hopeless, and I
like that. So like I said, there are a lot
of great things going on in this book,
but it's not flawless. It makes me a
little scared to criticize this book
because I don't want anyone, for even a
second, to misconstrue any of my
criticism as any degree of disdain for
the novel's complete message. Because
that's not the case at all. But I think I
would be remiss to skirt around the
things I didn't like for the sake of
appearances. So things I wasn't crazy
about. Firstly, the writing, the writing
style. The writing is too explicit for my
taste,
and I don't mean explicit like vulgar,
parental advisory, I mean explicit as in
everything is spelled out for the reader
so clearly. There's nothing left for the
reader to infer because we're told
everything. The writing is so
definitively explicative, it can honestly
be a little exhausting to read. In terms
of the old adage, "show verses tell," I think
Angie Thomas does a lot of telling. And I
do love the message and the concept of
this book, but I remember while I was
reading, it wouldn't be uncommon for me
to think, "I wonder how much better this
story could be in the hands of a
different author."
The other main element of the novel that
I didn't really enjoy was the pacing. I
feel like the pacing was notably
inconsistent, with some sections being
really dragged out, but then some
important events only getting a
paragraph of attention. One example of a
main event in the book is a trial
hearing and the
trial hearing is a really really big deal
for both Starr and also for this entire
movement. But it'll appear and then
disappear in the storyline, which made me
want a better structured timeline and a
more consistent frame of reference. This
book is a pretty long book, and long
books don't necessarily have to feel
long, but this one did. And I feel like
that could've been fixed
if the pacing has been adjusted. So the
writing style and the pacing--those are
things I just wasn't a really big fan of.
But do those flaws even really matter
in the grand scheme of things? I'm
compelled to say that they don't, because
the significance of this book, the fact
that it was written, the fact that it's
published, and the fact that it's
successful--the fact that it exists, you know--
that significance outweighs subpar
writing or a fluctuating pace. This book
is meaningful to so many people and it
can do a lot to educate someone, to
inspire someone, to impact someone, and
isn't that the importance of literature to
begin with? I don't know. I'm not
particularly sure that I enjoyed reading
The Hate U Give in terms of emotion or
entertainment, but at the same time, I
don't doubt for a second that this book
is worth reading. To my knowledge, it's
the only YA novel out there that is
about this topic. If you know of any
other YA novels that are about the
Black Lives Matter movement or about
police brutality, let me know. But in the
moment that I'm recording this, this is
the only book like it, and that's worth
so much. So ultimately, I didn't really love
this book, but I love what it stands for,
and because of that, I would recommend it
to everyone. It's not perfect, but it's
important, and maybe that's worth more in
the long run. Bow I'm going to go into a
quick spoiler section about The Hate U
Give by Angie Thomas, so if you haven't
read this book and you don't want to be
spoiled,
I would advise leaving in 3... 2... 1...
Bye.
I think I knew from the beginning
that Officer One-Fifteen wasn't going to be
convicted, because they never are. But
still, I was hoping. I was--I was hoping
that there would be justice. But I
suppose if there had been justice, I would
have questioned Angie Thomas's decision to,
you know, change the ending so that it
didn't reflect real life anymore. So she
stayed true to how these trials always
go, but it was still upsetting. It's never
not upsetting, you know? I didn't cry
throughout the entire book until the
last few pages when
Starr begins listing all these victims
who lost their lives to police brutality.
That was remarkably effective, extremely
provocative, and just a really really
strong conclusion, I thought. Unrelated,
but regarding writing, there were two
passages in this book that I highlighted
when I was reading it on my Nook because
I just didn't like these sentences for
some reason. I just really really
despised them so much that I highlighted
them. One is in response to Starr saying
"love you" for the first time to Chris over
text and she writes, "It's as foreign as a
Spanish word I haven't learned yet." "It's
as foreign as a Spanish word I haven't
learned yet." I dislike this simile so
much, I had to stop reading and highlight
it so that I could add it in my review.
"It's as foreign as a Spanish word I haven't
learned yet." I was not here for that.
The other passage that I highlighted
because I didn't like it was an example
of how many needlessly explicative I feel
like Angie Thomas's writing is
sometimes. She writes, "One-Fifteen's father is his
voice, but I'm Khalil's. The only way people
will know his side of the story is if I
speak out." That's literally one of the
main conflicts of the entire novel--is
Starr struggling with this decision to
tell the truth and speak out and share
Khalil's side of the story. I just don't
think that needed to be explicitly stated
for the reader to know what's at stake. I
just wish the writing would have given
the reader a little bit more credit to
take away these central themes on their
own. To counterbalance those two examples, though,
I have a couple of lines that I really
enjoyed. The first one is when Starr's
doing an interview and she says, "It seems
like they always talk about what he may
have said, what he may have done, what he
may have not done. I didn't know a dead
person could be charged with his own
murder, you know?" When I read that, I put
my Nook down and I was like, "She did that.
She went there." Yas, queen. And then
there was another one that I didn't
highlight but I loved it so much I still
remember it, but I don't know it verbatim.
It was something along the lines of: I
hear his laugh and his laughs makes me
laugh, so I know it's Chris. It was
something really simple like that, but it
was just such a cute sentiment. Something
I really loved about this book is the
way that Angie Thomas incorporates a lot
of conversations about race
that can seem maybe a little tangential
but are so important to me. The
conversation where Chris asks about a
black people having "weird" names--that
conversation was so important to me.
Literally every conversation with Haley
being her stupid, obnoxious,
self-righteous self. Haley was just so
symbolic of how some people can be so
blind to their own crimes. I wish Maya
had been better developed because she
honestly kind of seemed like a
throwaway ally that existed just to make
Starr more validated in her anger against
Haley. But Haley's dialogue was always so
intentionally self-exonerating, I was
really impressed by how Angie Thomas
just captured this really common
sentiment any time Haley talked. Like, my
college roommate has a friend from back
home and her friend likes to call me
Ling Ling. And they laugh like it's just a
joke, but I guess they don't understand
the entitlement that comes with making
jokes like that. I felt exactly like Maya
when she was upset that Haley asked her
whether she ate a cat for Thanksgiving,
and I felt exactly like Starr who was
angry when Haley made that fried
chicken joke on the basketball court.
People like Haley make Maya and Starr
feel like they're not allowed to be
offended, oh, because it was just a joke.
The thing is the people like Haley are
not in a position to be saying things
like that or to be cracking jokes like
that, and it's infuriating because so
many people are going to look at the
situation and think, "Oh, why are you
overreacting?
Can't you take a joke? You're so
sensitive. You're such a social justice
warrior," and sure, I can be sensitive, and
sure, I can be outspokenly liberal,
but those traits aren't an excuse for someone
to put the blame on me or Maya or Starr
when Haley's the one being ignorant. Just
the fact that I launched into a rant like
this, I think, shows how important Angie
Thomas's book is. She incorporates so
many conversations like that in this
book that I just never see anywhere else
in YA and I appreciate it so much.
One scene that really really hurt my
heart was when Big Mav is forced to the
ground by the cops in front of his
children. And that scene is just so
startling because Big Mav is such a huge
figure, both in Starr's life, but also in
this neighborhood, you know. He has so
much power, he has so much authority, and he
demands so much respect from everyone
around him. But that instantly
dissipates the second a cop comes
onto the scene, because then, anything
could be interpreted as a cause for a
bullet. That just destroys me. One decision
that I thought was super intentional and
super--just excellent, it was an excellent
choice--was Angie Thomas's decision to
make Starr's uncle a cop. The fact that her
uncle was a cop added such a unique
element of tension to the rest of the
conflict. I probably had so much more
to say about this book but that's all I
have notes written for. Please, please let
me know what you thought about The Hate
U Give by Angie Thomas. It's really
such an important book and there are so
many seeds for discussion, so I'd really
really love to hear your thoughts on
this book or on the topics that this book
brings up. I sound like such an English
teacher for saying that, but I'm not
kidding, this book is just so fertile for
conversation. Thanks so much for
watching, I hope y'all have a fantastic
day, and happy reading. Goodbye!
[outro music: "Summer Moments" by Del]
