When I try to start this review, I am cowed at the prospect of it. What do I, a mid-30s white woman have to say about Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, the story of Starr Carter, a sixteen year old young black woman growing up in the ghetto, who is a witness to the murder of not one, but two of her friends? What do I have to say about her experience, or about the experience of everyone in this book, so far removed […]
THUG gave me all the feels
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas deserves all the hype and awards. The story centers around teenager Starr Carter who lives in the African-American community of Garden Heights while attending an expensive private school on the posh side of town. She has two sides of her life, two faces she shows each environment. Her white boyfriend Chris has never met her Dad. Her friend Kenya, who she shares a half-brother with has never met any of her high school friends. The two worlds collide after […]
Another book my home state has managed to ban
I have been on the waitlist to get a copy of this for months and months and was so excited to finally read it. I was even more excited to see that Angie Thomas won two Goodreads Choice Awards for her work shortly afterwards. Well deserved! “Pac said Thug Life stood for ‘The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody’.” Starr Carter lives in a rough neighborhood, Garden Heights, with her mother and former gangbanger father but attends a private school in a nicer neighboring […]
Four Recent novels about teens: What I Saw and why I Lied; All American Boys; The Hate U Give; Confessions
What I Saw and Why I Lied – Judy Blundell – 3/5 This novel takes place in the years following World War II back in the US. Our narrator’s mother has a new husband who was off to the war and our main character, a teenager in high school, goes with her mom and her husband to a resort in Florida, right at the beginning of school. While she’s there she meets a local boy, a bellhop at the hotel, who is kind of ugly […]
Truly, The Hate U Give Little Infants F’s Everybody (THUG LIFE)
Nearly twenty years ago, Jacqueline Woodson first tackled the same subject matter as depicted in The Hate U Give (2017) in her typically poetic and poignant style in the novel If You Come Softly (1998). It is a story of first love, an interracial one between fifteen-year-old Jeremiah and Ellie who meet at their private school. They have to deal with how society treats them because of their relationship. In the end, this modern day Romeo and Juliet comes to an abrupt end when Jeremiah is fatally shot by […]
So. Much. Ugly. Crying.
Can I just write a four word review? EVERYONE. READ. THIS. NOW. No? You need more? Ok fine. Thomas tells the story through the first-person voice of 16-year old Starr Carter, who is witness to one of her close friends (Khalil, a black teen boy) be killed for no reason by a white police officer. It’s (sadly) not an unusual story if you’ve turned on the news, like, ever… but to see it through the eyes of this young girl makes an unthinkable tragedy […]