The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

[Louise, Group Founder]

This is the thread for discussing our September group read, (theme: Teen/Young Adult), The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

The Hate U Give
A powerful and brave YA novel about what prejudice looks like in the 21st century.

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer.

Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice.

Published February 28, 2017 , The Hate U Give opened at number one on The New York Times young adult best-seller list. It is Thomas's debut novel.


Looking forward to both reading and discussing this one!

[Kairia]

This is a spoiler-free comment:

I managed to get a copy of this book early so I finished it a few days ago. I typically don't pay attention to reviews before I read a book, but I noticed that the Hate U Give has nearly five stars on Goodreads. After reading this book, I think I understand why.

The Hate U Give discusses topics such as racism, classism, gang violence, love, loss, and protest. These are topics that will always be relevant and in this case, is a modern commentary on the Black Lives Matter movement, Trayvon Martin, police brutality, and modern-day politics.

These messages are extremely important to convey, especially to young people. The topics discussed in this novel are multi-layered and will take more than one book to truly understand. Angie Thomas attempted to put them in a digestible format for younger audiences.

With that said, it's very hard to take a novel seriously when the author chooses to express emotion and actions through pop culture references, as seen here:

"Before Khalil, I planned to cold-shoulder Chris with a sting more powerful than a nineties R&B breakup song. But after Khalil I'm more like a Taylor Swift song. (No shade, I fucks with Tay-Tay, but she doesn't serve like nineties R&B on the angry-girlfriend scale.)

You know what? I'll Beyonce him. Not as powerful as a nineties R&B breakup song, but stronger than a Taylor Swift."

Reading those paragraphs in real time felt like a train wreck; the scene derailed quickly and I still don't understand what the author was trying to convey. Now imagine ten, twenty, thirty years from now, the audience is going to be even more lost. Books immediately become dated when pop culture references are used in this way and what's worse, they don't connect with young readers as well as authors think they will.

After this scene, all the forced slang and references are toned way down. They're no longer interrupting the story and more important messages are focused on.

Overall this book was decent and hopefully it encourages young readers to understand African-Americans as individuals and as American citizens who are still being oppressed in this day and age. Change comes in baby steps and can start with a young child's hands holding this book.

[Louise, Group Founder]

That was the one section that left me totally mystified as well!

There are a few rather jarring pop culture references like that that seem a bit too much like trying too hard, but that's the most glaring (maybe I'm just too old though!). Overall though I think most of them work - for today at least, I guess the true test will come in a few years time. Hopefully police brutality eventually becomes such a thing of the past that the whole book becomes a twenty-tens period piece for future readers though. Hopefully.

I'm a bit over halfway through now and enjoying it a lot. if enjoy is the right word for it.

[Carol]

Just to play devil's advocate, why do we as readers care as an initial matter if THUG resonates with readers twenty or thirty years from now, or if the pop culture references might ultimately ground it entirely in 2017? Why is it that we consider the true test to be whether a novel is being read several years hence versus right now? Are future readers' choices necessary to validate an artistic work?

I ask these questions not to challenge any individual, but to challenge the idea that these are the right questions for us as readers to ask of a novel. I recall reading and panning a thriller 2 years ago here on GR because of all the brand names dropped in the first dozen pages, but other readers who pushed back on me were right, IMO. The book had an average 4.1 rating and millions of those ratings. The references I thought might date it . . . would date it . . but they were irrelevant to the readers who bought and read it hot off the presses. And if it deserves those high ratings, the brand of refrigerator won't detract from it but will be taken for granted as a descriptor. Said differently, if a book resonates so greatly with the market that it sells millions of hardback copies to readers today and they are moved, touched, educated, inspired, driven to thoughtfulness by its contents, then why do we deem the more important marker to be the reaction of other readers several years down the line?

For most authors, it's a bonus if one or more of their works is still being read in 20 - 30 years. So very few books become a classic. Even fewer books resonate with such a broad spectrum of readers at the time of their initial release.

The jokes in the Canterbury Tales and in many Shakespeare plays have to be explained to each new audience. The cultural expectations of women and patriarchal notions prevalent in various cultures have to be explained to readers in order for them to understand why Jane Austen's characters behave as they do. Yet we consider those works timeless.

Are we being old (I'm 56) or white (I am, but have no idea about other members' identification in terms of ethnicity) or both, or neither, lol?

I'm really interested in this topic because it's a reaction I see inconsistently and I always wonder what's behind it, whether it is me or someone else. Yes, I adored this book, and I rarely if ever read YA, so am delighted to explore it here and kick around various aspects of it.

[lethe]

I have a hard time understanding the part that Kairia quoted now, let alone in 20-30 years :)

But then, I accept that I, being 58, white and European, am not in the target group for this novel.

[Louise, Group Founder]

I'm 28 (and white) and the individual words made sense but it took me a very long time to understand the overall meaning in parts of that section. Mostly trying to detect whether she meant she likes or dislikes TSwift there. Maybe it's a US slang thing though... In the UK I generally tell people not to fuck with me.

As for whether it holds up, I actually agree that if you're reading and enjoying it now, it doesn't really matter what people will think in twenty years. I'm still hoping that eventually the subject matter, as much as the references, will be what grounds it in 2017 and makes it anachronistic for future readers. I do feel that people will still be reading it though, although Im not finished I already feel pretty confident it will survive the test of time.

I also think that, because this is teen fiction and the characters are teens, it does make sense to namedrop musicians, brands, etc if that's what the characters are into. And, because the Black Lives Matter movement is such a product of our time, that I would expect a book discussing those themes to be firmly rooted and identifiable to the present day in all its references anyway. Not to do so at all would probably be a failure to accurately reflect the setting and maybe even undermine the characters and story - both need to feel believably real for this book to work. So, so far, while there have been several references I thought were a bit laboured, the only one that's actually pulled me out of the book is the passage quoted above (but again, probably my age and background coming into play there).


Still, no denying that when I'm finally getting round to reading a popular release that's now a few years old and find it overloaded with cultural references and brand names it can make me cringe - The Millennium Trilogy would be the prime example though obviously that is nowhere near as good or a thoughtful novel as this to begin with.

I guess the trick is probably to keep the references relevant to the characters and their interests or to deliberately tie it to a particular historic moment rather than being there as lazy descriptors. That way even if it dates (and all references do), it still serves a purpose. And if the references are part of what helps teen readers identify with Starr, I say throw them in!

[Carol]

Thanks for your great response. I agree completely with your last para, too.

Re TSwift, she writes white-girl breakup songs. She pines. She isn't capable of serving it, e.g., being truly direct or mean, because she still always wants to be liked.

Here's a link to a great list of 90s R&B breakup songs.

https://www.bustle.com/p/17-randb-bre...

The best of these is Erykah Badu's Tyrone. It's the classic R&B , "pack your stuff, leave and don't call me again" song.

[Kairia]

Pop culture references themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing in a novel. I feel they detract from a book when they're used to describe an action or emotion, instead of the author describing how the character actually feels or what they are going to do.
Otherwise, whether this book stands up to the test of time, I think it brings up valid discussions for here and now. Whether we discuss it in the future isn't necessarily an important part of enjoying this book.

[Jeanne]

Carol wrote: "Just to play devil's advocate, why do we as readers care as an initial matter if THUG resonates with readers twenty or thirty years from now, or if the pop culture references might ultimately groun..."

I have been playing both sides of this argumentin my head this morning – before reading Carol's eloquent response, which she thought out and expressed more carefully than I would have. Thank you.

I'm about 1/3 through THUG and "enjoying" it a lot. I haven't had difficulty understanding the references, but initially found them somewhat tiresome (I'm 60, white, mother of a biracial daughter, living in rural US, and spend a lot of time talking with teens and YA). I often find, though, that it takes a while before the language and cadence of a book feels smooth to me, so my initial reaction to the book may be only that.

The bigger thing about this conversation for me: Kairia raised an important question, and Carol responded thoughtfully. This give and take is what I want from a book group and has been missing from another group I belong to. Thank you, all!

[Carol]

Thanks, Jeanne -

As a funny aside, I read THUG first, and then a mid-30s and Polish GR friend read it - in English, which is a second/third language for her - and we DMd back and forth with terms we'd looked up and learned, mostly from Urban Dictionary, but occasionally from my 15 year old daughter. I was impressed that a reader for whom English isn't a first language would take a shot at THUG, but it didn't phase her a bit.

My favorite newly-learned term was THOT.

[Jeanne]

I'm impressed with anyone who reads a book in a second or third language.

Glad that THOT was not a part of my vocabulary before this... :)

[Laurie]

Now that I know what a THOT is (thanks to Urban Dictionary), I bet there is not an equivalent term for a guy.

[Jeanne]

Laurie wrote: "Now that I know what a THOT is (thanks to Urban Dictionary), I bet there is not an equivalent term for a guy."

My daughter was scandalized that I asked about Laurie's question. I suggested "man-ho," but the connotation is different. She said, "There is probably not an equivalent. There is lots of convo about how women are labeled as hoes while men get high fives for the exact same shit."

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I'm glad to drop in on this discussion. I didn't want to read the book because, for me, an author who uses texting in a title won't be saying anything that would interest me. Thank you all for confirming my decision.

[Carol]

Ever has it been. I'm glad there's lots of conversation about this disparity if convos can help drive change.

One of the side benefits of this read for me was the conversations I had with my daughter about quite a few topics, plus the expansion of my ability to translate acronyms of which
I was heretofore unaware. A literary American Youth 101, as it were.

[Carol]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I'm glad to drop in on this discussion. I didn't want to read the book because, for me, an author who uses texting in a title won't be saying anything that would interest me. Thank you all for conf..."

The title comes from a band name. I hope you are reading and discussing something you enjoy in another forum.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Carol wrote: "The title comes from a band name. I hope you are reading and discussing something you enjoy in another forum. "

Not up on bands. I rarely discuss books on GR, but I'll hope there is one eventually in this group for a book I will read. It's getting a bit discouraging, though.

[lethe]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I'm glad to drop in on this discussion. I didn't want to read the book because, for me, an author who uses texting in a title won't be saying anything that would interest me. Thank you all for conf..."

It may not appeal to you (it doesn't to me, either), but there's no denying this is an important book for this day and age in the US, addressing as it does police brutality against black teens.

[Jeanne]

lethe wrote: "It may not appeal to you (it doesn't to me, either), but there's no denying this is an important book for this day and age in the US, addressing as it does police brutality against black teens."

One of the things I like about book clubs is being encouraged to read things outside my typical choices – and I've read a number here that I wouldn't have read that I've enjoyed. Still, I don't choose to read everything from each book group, and I don't enjoy reading and discussing with each book group. I do like being pushed outside my comfort zone.

[lethe]

Jeanne wrote: "One of the things I like about book clubs is being encouraged to read things outside my typical choices – and I've read a number here that I wouldn't have read that I've enjoyed."

I understand and applaud that.

But since I have hundreds as yet unread books on my shelves, I have made a deal with myself. I won't borrow a book from the library (let alone buy it — my library has apparently not yet realized this is a must-have title) unless I absolutely want to read it.

As I get older, I'm starting to realize that time is actually finite and choices will have to be made :-)

[Carol]

Choices indeed must be made. Reading this was a stretch for me because it's marketed as YA and because I typically eschew debuts, but Thomas' control of her story, her characters and the mix of the political and the personal were so successful for me that getting over the YA aspects was easy. Had she not gotten that balance right, I'd not be a fangirl.

A couple of questions were raised in another GR group that read The Hate U Give last month and I'm interested in this group of readers' responses:

1. In the beginning, do you think the dad was selfish for wanting to stay in the projects?
2. Would you have let your child speak up or would you have kept quiet or encouraged him or her to stay quiet for his or her safety?

With respect to the first one, the choice of where we all live is a core part of our identity. We are urban or rural. If I tell someone the town I live in, I can almost see the wheels turning as they conclude, "suburb - oh, she's scared of cities". Add a layer of US history to the choice to stay in the city center or move to the suburbs and I can imagine it being difficult to be seen as deserting one's community and becoming suburban. I didn't think he was selfish, but I was once again dismayed to read a contemporary novel where a key family decision was made unilaterally by the dad without meaningful input from either spouse or high-school age kids. Everyone was waiting for his decision. It reinforced my sense that many of our US families are still stuck in the 50s in so many ways, when it comes to major family decisions.

[Jeanne]

Carol wrote: "1. In the beginning, do you think the dad was selfish for wanting to stay in the projects?
2. Would you have let your child speak up or would you have kept quiet or encouraged him or her to stay quiet for his or her safety? "

1. This seems to have been an investment in his culture, which was also an investment in his family, so no. This seems so central a value to his being that ignoring it would be like demanding that he stop being who he is. This wasn't a unilateral decision: he tried to balance this value with other ways of supporting his children's educations and safety.

2. One of my values is speaking up about the things that are important to me: I believe we can't only believe something, but need to talk and do. My choices would be different for different children, though, depending on their strengths, weaknesses, and degree of ambivalence about speaking. For Starr, how would Starr feel if she didn't talk openly about what she saw? I think she would have felt pretty badly.

Keep in mind that I'm only about half-way through the book, so I don't know how speaking out worked for Starr – or even if she did.

[Louise, Group Founder]

Thanks Carol for the interesting questions, I am enjoying the book discussion.

1. I think it's actually both selfish and very unselfish at the same time - I think it depends on which you view as the 'selfish' motivation - the safety of yourself and your family or sticking to your ideals. But I would lean more towards unselfish. You don't change an area by moving out and he (and the rest of his family) all had so many cultural ties to the place that I can understand how moving away would seem like both hypocrisy and a betrayal of values. It's just that idealism like that isn't always practical - or safe. I would also question that it was a unilateral decision made by the father. It was something the mother had clearly been wanting, arguing over, and pushing for for ages but that couldn't happen until her husband got on board. It sucks a bit that it's the man's opinion that appears to hold all the weight but, I like to think that, had it been the other way round; with the dad wanting to move and the mum wanting to stay, that they would also not have moved until both parents were on board with it. It definitely would have been nice if the older children were consulted a bit more first but, under the circumstances, I can see why the parents might decide to just get on with it.

2. Disclaimer: I do not have kids and I don't plan to so my answer may be very different from an actual parents. I would honestly hope that if I had a kid who witnessed something like that, they would be the sort of person who would speak out without me having to encourage them, though obviously it being such a traumatic experience I wouldn't be surprised if, like Starr, they took a little while to reach that point.

[Carol]

@Louise - thanks!

It's interesting to think about speaking out in situations where speaking out puts a minor at risk. Most of us who are white have never been in that position. We speak out and, at most, have an argument or volatile disagreement with someone, but our persons, families, jobs, safety are not at risk. African-American families have to worry about police retaliation, retaliation from white folks who call them thugs for pushing back on government-sponsored violence, possible repercussions at work for an employed parent, a whole host of possibilities that my kids don't have to consider. What would it be like for public speech to have such repercussions for me or my kids?

In theory, I will always be on the side of activism and challenging authority to live up to America's ideals. In practice, I can understand a family for whom speech has significant repercussions to decide differently.

[Louise, Group Founder]

Yeah, I expect my answers to be very different from people who have actually lived a similar experience. I don't really think it's one of those things anyone can know what they would do or think until they experience it for themselves. Racism is something I get very angry about on behalf of others, but I have never myself been a victim of racism or held back by racist cultural structures. Me speaking out as a middle-class white woman is inherently less dangerous than it would be for someone else from a different background, even if we were to say the exact same thing.

And I'm fairly sure I'm only being cavalier about my theoretical children safety because I know it's unlikely they will ever exist.

[Molly]

Starr’s story was beautiful, moving, and while specifically rooted in the experience of Black Americans, was also relatable to me as a white woman. Her struggle to do the right thing, to even determine what that right thing is, to protect her family, honor her friends, and to be who everyone needs her to be without being her whole self is by turns inspiring, enraging, and eye-opening.

I didn’t have a problem with the language of this book — this is how young people speak. I loved the scene of Starr thinking about how to react to Chris, whether she was going to embody Garden Heights Beyonce (“I could have another you in a minute, matter of fact he’ll be here any minute”) or Williamson Taylor Swift ("I've got you down, I know you by heart, but you don't even know where I start.”), neither of which would be as powerful as her inner whole-self Mary J Blige (“Swallowed my fears, stood by your side, I shoulda left your ass a thousand times”). Haven’t we all appreciated the exact right song playing on the radio or heard music in our head as we deal with difficult situations? If you’ve never walked into a room with a theme song, I suggest you go ahead and try it because it feels awesome. :)

I’d also say that we regularly acclaim Shakespeare and Faulkner and Dickens and Twain, all of whom wrote prose firmly rooted in the slang, pop culture references, and dialects of their times.

To the discussion questions:

1. This one’s hard, because at some point, to change things someone has to stay. When it becomes clear that part of Mav’s desire to stay is about his own ideas of himself as a man, yes, that feels more selfish. But it’s also understandable to have values about your community and the activism and work you want to do for people and wanting to hold those close. I used to work for a national medical students’ organization and in surveys of the membership, med students of color both wanted to be primary care physicians at higher rates and pointed to student loan debt as a reason they couldn’t be primary care physicians at higher rates than their white classmates. That desire to help, to give something back, to use skills and talents to benefit the place where you grew up isn’t unique to Black communities; it’s true of rural white communities, of immigrant communities, etc.

2. I honestly don’t know. I work for a social justice organization and I’d love to say I’d want my family to be up front as an example of speaking truth to power, but I don’t know that I would. There’s a reason that community matters — so that other people can help speak up for you when you’re not able to do so. It’s also entirely different for me as a white woman to think about what “speaking up” means. I think Thomas does an excellent job of highlighting all of the possible — and actual — repercussions for Starr and her family in speaking out and in staying silent. Neither is a perfectly “right” choice and, in the end, Starr has to make not the “right” choice, but the choice she can live with.

[Kairia]

This is a bit late but if you enjoyed the Hate U Give, I'd highly recommend Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. It has most, if not the same, messages that the Hate U Give portrays, but through an adult's perspective.

[Karin]

I just read this and liked it--powerful. I didn't love it as much as I thought I might, but liked it better than Small Great Things.