#Nationalhonorbook

[luv-2-read]

The Hate You Give

By: Angie Thomas

 There are many important points to this story but let’s start off with the title and what It means, or rather how I interpret it. The Hate You Give, you, meaning the audience, what do we teach our kids or society, what did we learn growing up? Anytime that we have to adjust our perception of an environment I believe we are instilling a disapproval of something or someone. Our children can feed off the energy. They can sense our feeling or judgment, the look in our face, the tone of the voice gives off the feeling whether it be comfortable or unconvertable. In the first chapter, she makes a very powerful statement, “its dope to be black until it’s hard to be black.” Wow, isn’t that the truth. “Pac said, THUG LIFE, stands for “The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody”. It’s instilled when children are young.  When Khalil get shot it sends a flash through my brain of recent events with George Floyd and how he was treated and how such a simple and routine stop turned into someone’s death. Just because you decided that. Not God, YOU! The story turns into lessons, precautions, acceptance and a whole bunch of awareness. The plot arises when Starr needs to decide whether or not to speak up to be the voice for her friend Khalil. In Spite of threats from drug lords and police, what is the right thing to do? Very powerful even in this day and age that these issues rae still very much in existence. It’s not very common where I live but it happens. My niece would come home from daycare obsessed with insisting that she is white not brown. We are Mexican, so we are a little naturally tanned, but she wasn’t having it. She was obsessed. Apparently the girls in school would make fun of the only little African American student in the classroom. She was so petrified of being made fun of that she didn’t want to be the same skin color. The thing is that at home we don’t encourage ignorance or any type of biases much less racism. Her mother set her straight fast, with the importance of self-love and reassurance. At home, my father was inprisoned when I was nineteen for a charge on possession with intent to distribute. Although in comparison to the book I never had to be raised to be careful with the police, to be safe out on the street, to have to attend a different school to avoid certain groups. It wasn’t like that. You grew up where you grew up and went to school where it was designated for you to go. Everyone was your friend regardless of the background. I can relate in many ways to an inch of the experience.

 I think everyone needs to read this book, I think everyone who teaches can use it as teaching experience. The story is powerful and maybe some of the topics are a bit too much for some people but not most people.

Thomas, A. (2017). The hate u give. New York: Balzer + Bray.