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When my best friend asked if I was aware of this book, I said no. She read the entire book in one day and couldn’t put it down. I saw her a few days later, and she put the book in my hands. I’m a slow reader, so it took me a couple of days, but The Hate U Give is a serious page-turner. It’s YA, so that often leads to a quick read, but you may already know that YA can also handle some dead serious subject matter. I cried. I laughed. I felt overwhelmed, angry, sad, and guilty. This book is at once simple and complicated. Everyone should read it.

Read Harder

The past two years I have participated in Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. I elected not to do it this year, because I wanted to focus more on writing, but what I love about the Read Harder Challenge is that it pushes you to read books that you might not otherwise encounter. Tasks might include reading a comic written by a person of color, or a celebrity memoir, or a book with a cover you hate. Doing such tasks led to me read more books that don’t look and sound like every other book – or like the old, dead, white men we were assigned to read in school. Whether or not you participate in a reading challenge, I encourage you to Read Harder. Get outside your reading comfort zone. The Hate U Give could be a good place to start.

The Hate U Give is set in a traditionally black neighborhood in an urban area and centers on the life of Starr, an African-American teenager who witnesses her friend being shot (unarmed) by a police officer. The rest of the book centers on what happens in her community and how her life is affected by being “The Witness.” I’m not African-American. I have never lived in a city. The closest personal connection I have to this story is that I stayed up all night refreshing my Twitter feed when things were happening in Ferguson, Missouri. None of that stopped me from feeling a connection to this young protagonist. I can connect to her the same way I connect to other characters whose lives do not resemble my own, like Oliver Twist or Elizabeth Bennett… only her story is happening now. That is why it is important to read this book right now.

Family

I love Starr’s family. In many ways they are a “traditional” family, but in many more ways they are much more real and complicated than that. They have a mom, dad, and 2.5 kids. One of the kids is the result of one of those complications. I felt like sometimes those complications were dealt with in a manner that was a bit too tidy, but those were all secondary to the main story and added to it more than taking anything away for me.

Starr’s parents and I would probably be the same age, so I found them very easy to relate to. Starr talks about how they act or what they wear that embarrasses her, and I think they are 100% normal. They both seem very connected to their own youth. Sometimes I feel like people my age are just overgrown teenagers, and here we are raising other teenagers. And let me just say, I would love to be invited to a BBQ at Uncle Carlos’s house and embarrass my kids with my dance moves.

T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E

I am embarrassed to admit that I did not realize that the title abbreviation spells THUG until Khalil explains it to Starr shortly before he is shot. It is a reference to Tupac Shakur, and the author explains here that she was inspired by this video. Starr’s response is that Tupac is no longer relevant, which made me feel really old. Let me reiterate that I had a very white small town upbringing. Everything my white teenage self knew about black people was learned from N.W.A., Geto Boys, movies like Boyz n the Hood and Colors, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Of course, we all saw Juice, which was probably my first encounter with Tupac, but I never listened to him much myself. I like how Starr comes back to this conversation with Khalil periodically throughout the story. It is closely tied to how she grows throughout the book.

Speaking of thugs… As one might suspect, despite being the victim of the shooting Khalil is painted as a thug by the media. What I love about this book is that it delves into the complicated feelings that Starr encounters when she questions the life choices of her friend. She knows that even if he was in a gang and selling drugs, what she witnessed was an innocent kid getting shot. My one qualm with the story is that Khalil’s gang-related actions are excused a bit too neatly. I am much more impressed with the way the story deals with Devante. He is complicated, and his motivations are less neatly wrapped up. This was where the book impressed me most. (Read it!)

Community

Another complicated theme throughout The Hate U Give surrounds questions about what it means to be part of a community. Starr and her siblings commute to a school in a nicer part of town. She dates a white boy that she meets at school. Does this make her fake, a traitor? If she hadn’t changed schools, would she have been there for Khalil when he needed her? One of her parents wants to move out of the neighborhood and one of them wants to stay. What are the right answers?

My favorite scene is when Starr and her boyfriend, Chris, are with her brother, Seven, and Devante and they start teasing Chris about why white people do things that they do. After taking several jabs, Chris asks if he can ask something about black people. There’s this moment of palpable silence as the other kids exchange looks, and finally Starr tells the boys it is only fair. There’s a lot that happens in this book and it covers a lot of ground emotionally, but that awkward moment – and how it wraps up after Chris asks his question – was what pushed this book way past five stars for me. At my job, the Chief Diversity Officer says, “You have to get uncomfortable to get comfortable.” This scene is a simple but brilliant demonstration of how you can learn and get a new perspective by asking a question and having your assumptions challenged.

I know I haven’t done this book justice, so READ IT. (Movie coming soon!)

READ THIS BOOK!!