The Hate U Give
Summary:
Starr has always struggled to keep the two parts of her life in balance: during the week, she attends a private and mostly white high school in an affluent area of her city, the rest of her time is spent in her home in Garden Heights, a Black neighbourhood, a place seen as ‘ghetto’ by those who live outside it, its Black youth discriminated against and marginalised. The divisions within Starr’s life become unbearable when she is the sole witness when one of her childhood friends, Khalil, is shot dead by a police officer. Starr has to make some of the most difficult and important decisions of her life as Khalil’s death is blamed on him, and not those who committed the murder
Edited by: Dublin City University
Comment:
The novel explores the systemic racism, including police brutality, that young Black communities in the US face, the central element of the novel focusing on its most extreme iteration: the shooting of unarmed Black boys and men. Yet the novel also explores experiences of injustice where race and gender intersect, as experienced by Starr in her everyday life: she not only constantly adapts her clothes and hair to the settings she is in, but her language, her behaviour, and her voice to avoid being labelled with the trope of angry black girl. As the pressure in Starr’s life builds as she faces a hostile legal system that offers no justice for its Black communities, and none for her friend Khalil, Starr’s anger becomes the route to finding her own voice, and gives the reader a glimpse of how powerful the voice of young Black girls can be.