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The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas

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Crazy Challenges - No Way!

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* Crazy Challenges
By southpaw285 · 1 post · 496 views

last updated Jan 09, 2013 06:08PM

Electricity
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What Members Thought

Dec 21, 2018 Rachel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is just incredible - so many feelings, so many tears. Highly recommend.

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Sep 11, 2018 Roz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ya-lit, black, 2010-2019

Starr and her childhood best friend Khalil were driving home from a party when they were stopped by a cop for a broken taillight. Khalil ended up dead at the cop's hand. Neither teen was armed. Suddenly Starr is dealing not only with her grief at losing her friend, but also the guilt and fear that comes with dealing the police and being the only witness to yet another hashtag murder. She doesn't want to be the center of the media furor that comes with cases like this, but she wants justice for h Starr and her childhood best friend Khalil were driving home from a party when they were stopped by a cop for a broken taillight. Khalil ended up dead at the cop's hand. Neither teen was armed. Suddenly Starr is dealing not only with her grief at losing her friend, but also the guilt and fear that comes with dealing the police and being the only witness to yet another hashtag murder. She doesn't want to be the center of the media furor that comes with cases like this, but she wants justice for her friend. Figuring out the right course of action has enormous consequences - not just for Khalil's memory, but for the safety of her family as they receive threats from the police and from the local drug lord who has some nebulous connection to Khalil.

Starr's story is heart-wrenching. It's never easy to lose a friend. But she also had to witness it happen and know that in all likelihood, there won't be any legal retribution against the cop who killed him. Working through her emotions - her fear of cops and what they could do to her, her guilt over the fact that she and Khalil hadn't spoken for months before his death, her simultaneous desire that people know what happened that night and that she not be associated with it at all, the feeling that she can't talk to anyone at her majority white prep school about what's going on - is a difficult, contradictory, and circuitous process. Starr's emotional journey in the book felt extremely real and relevant.

One of the ways this emotional journey really touched me was through the use of language. Starr is hyper-conscious of her use of language, of what she says where and in front of whom. She has a part to play both in her neighborhood and in her school and never the twain shall meet. But in the process of working her grief - which is often messy and nonsensical especially to her school friends who don't even know she knew Khalil - she becomes more willing to show her true self in all spaces. She never wanted to be labeled as "ghetto" at school, but sometimes, that's what she is. That's where she's from. That's how she talks. And seeing her get to a place where she can feel comfortable being Starr in all her complexities to her friends and boyfriend was so beautiful. Realizing that she doesn't need to hide aspects of herself, that respectability politics rarely actually works and she shouldn't force herself to play by someone else's rules, was powerful and moving. ...more

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May 15, 2018 Kirby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, 2018-cbc

Outstanding.

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Apr 05, 2018 Nell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gr-read, awards-finalists, lfpc, okra, z2018

On a scale of one to five, this book is a ten!
This book has drawn me in with a story that's captivating. It's classified as a Young Adult novel (I can't remember reading this genre since I was a young adult). The writing is excellent, the story is spellbinding, the subject is vitally important and the perspective is one that never gets heard. This book is outstanding!!! ...more

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