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tl;dr Review:
Hands down, one of my top 10 favorite books I’ve ever read.
Full Review:
It’s funny because if you had told me a year ago that some of my favorite books would be Young Adult novels, I’d have laughed you out of the room.
So imagine my surprise when I absolutely SWOONED over The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.
First of all, it’s not a slim read by any means. At a swarthy 444 pages, it’s definitely a tome as it sits on your bookshelf. But those 444 pages flew by in 2 days for me because I could not put it down.
The story follows a high school student named Starr Carter, who goes to a “fancy suburban prep school” that is almost entirely white, while living in on the other side of the tracks. A major plot point is how Starr struggles to reconcile her school self with her real self. Though it’s a slightly different scenario, I’ve often struggled as well with the dichotomy of belonging to different worlds.
My mom was born and raised in Jamaica, my grandpa was black, and my DNA (according to Ancestry) is at least 15% African, specifically from Mali (along with a whole heap of other countries and ethnicities, but that’s a story for another day). And as you can tell from my thumbs up pictures, I am pretttttty white looking. Presenting white, but growing up biracial with the multicultural and varied traditions of both my Afro-Carribbean and American roots (daddy is good ole white bread WASP from the midwest), has led to me dealing with my own struggles in trying to fit in but never fully being one side or the other.
But it wasn’t just that part of the story that resonated with me. It was also this:
The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.
Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family.
What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
How we deal with race and racism as a nation right now is constantly on my mind, and this book gave a voice to what it’s like to experience first hand a life-altering shooting like Michael Brown’s or Alton Sterling’s. And while I have benefited from presenting white and all the white privilege that comes with that, I related to this book and its story on a cellular level.
The authenticity, honestly, and brilliant prose at the hands of Angie Thomas make this book hands down one of my favorites of all time. I laughed, I cried, I pretty much couldn’t move after I finished it.
If you are looking for a read that will not only get into your head, but embed itself in your bones with its realness, you need to read this book.
I give it 5 out of 5 thumbs up.
