Review: The Hate U Give

By: Vivi Carrasco

Keep your hands visible.

Don’t make any sudden moves.

Only speak when they speak to you.

These are the instructions Starr’s daddy gave her if she were to ever encounter a cop. When that day comes, her childhood best friend, Khalil, breaks Daddy’s rules and loses his life for it.

The Hate U Give will give you a serious emotional hangover. It’ll leave you sore. But a little hurt and growing pain comes with small victories. This book—now adapted as a motion picture—is a small victory within a much larger racial, socioeconomic battlefield. Angie Thomas writes a story worthy of all eyes—especially American ones.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in Garden Heights, a black neighborhood home to big-hearted barbers, drug-dealing gangbangers and families like hers. Her parents have a sweet and fierce love, for each other and for their kids. That means going off on a kid and saying “love you, mwah!” within the same five minutes. Starr is who she is because of her family, but she has another identity—the one she adopts when she goes to school at Williamson Prep, where she has a white boyfriend, takes AP classes and tries to be anything but “ghetto.”

Tension rises when things go unspoken.

“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?” Starr wonders midway through The Hate U Give.

She is the only witness to Khalil’s death. She is the only one that knows officer One-Fifteen’s gunshot was completely unsolicited and undeserved. Her testimony could spark justice in an otherwise tumultuous and unfair playing ground, where a white cop collects sympathy and a murdered teenager is labelled “gang member” and “drug-dealer.”

The root of the problem is fear. Fear translates into hate. T-H-U-G-L-I-F-E. The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. Tupac’s lyrics resonate throughout the novel. Daddy and Starr have a conversation about the phrase on a drive to pick up some ice cream. It’s a raw conversation between father and daughter, meant to address racial division with unwavering honesty.

The Hate U Give is overwhelmed with dialogue, and not in a bad way. It’s the perfect approach, because I think Thomas would love the idea of her novel paving the way for conversation. A book of conversation leads to a greater conversation. She incorporates Tupac’s Thug Life mantra, illuminating the idea that the fears and identities we place on our children create an ugly cycle of division and oppression. Starr’s father says the people on the bottom will remain trapped in their circumstances unless something changes. “That’s the key. It’s gotta change.”

At face value, The Hate U Give addresses police accountability and social equality. But with equal weight, it’s a brutally honest testimony about humanity. Messy love—the truest love—sprawls across its pages. Thomas contemplates over identity-struggle within interracial relationships, both romantic and platonic. She unpacks the beauty and complexity of a black family fighting for equality and the safety of their children. She empowers her audience and simultaneously makes them uncomfortable, because in discomfort there comes change.