![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/the-hate-u-give.jpg?resize=264%2C400&ssl=1\")
<\/a>I\u00a0spend a lot of time reading review journals, magazines, and online blogs about books. This\u00a0helps me to\u00a0order the most\u00a0current books for\u00a0my sections\u00a0and\u00a0keeps me\u00a0aware of\u00a0other books that\u00a0are coming out\u00a0across the whole library.\u00a0The Hate U Give<\/strong><\/em><\/a> came across my radar as a book to recommend to teens about gun violence. Based on all of the talk going around about this book and its relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement, I knew I needed to read The Hate U Give <\/strong><\/em><\/a>if just to try to understand the power this book has.<\/p>\nThe Hate U Give<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is a MASSIVE New York Times and Amazon bestseller. If the title drives you grammar nerds a little crazy, Thomas has reasons for it. The Hate U Give comes from the acronym THUG LIFE that Tupac Shakar had tattooed across his abdomen. It stands for “The hate u give little infants f**** everybody”. (If you’re offended by that word, I strongly suggest you don’t read this book. It doesn’t shy away from violence and language.)\u00a0That acronym runs rampant throughout The Hate U Give <\/em>and\u00a0the main characters keep returning to it.\u00a0It’s important. Now let’s get down to what this book is about.<\/p>\n The Hate U Give<\/strong><\/em> <\/a>tells the story of Starr.\u00a0 By the time she is sixteen, Starr has seen both of her best friends die as a result of gun violence: one\u00a0by a gang drive-by and the other just recently fatally\u00a0shot by a cop. Starr was out at a party, something she never does, when shots rang out. She and her friend Khalil took off running to his car. On their way home, they are stopped by the police, pulled over, and Khalil is shot and killed. (Obviously there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to give too many spoilers!)\u00a0Starr is the only witness to Khalil’s fatal shooting by that police officer. This fact causes her a great deal of agony. Does she speak up? Obviously her parents and the cops know that she witnessed his death, but does she tell her friends? How will she react when the story is plastered all over the news? What will she do\u00a0if the district attorney contacts her or\u00a0if the cops want to interview her? Starr wants to stand up for Khalil, but she is afraid. How will she react if people start telling lies about Khalil? She just doesn’t know what to do.<\/p>\n Starr has grown up in the rough area of Garden Heights, but with a solid family backing her up. Her mother works as a nurse in a clinic and desperately wants to move away to protect the family. Her father, known as Big Mav, is a former gang-member who took the fall for King, a notorious gang lord in the community, and spent three years in prison when Starr was younger. Now Big Mav owns the local grocery store and is working to make the community better. Starr doesn’t go to the local high school; instead she goes to Williamson, a private school in a more affluent neighborhood where instead of being a black majority, she’s one of only two black kids in her school. Starr constantly talks about her Williamson self and her Garden Heights self. They’re kept separate and each Starr acts different. Her Williamson friends and her Garden Heights friends hardly ever mix. This is a life that Starr has kind of adjusted to, but the slightest bump to her normal life could cause her world to come crashing down. Khalil’s death rocks her world and Starr soon finds herself and her family the target of the police and King, the local drug lord, as everyone puts pressure on her and intimidates her in order to figure out what really happened the night that Khalil died.<\/p>\n The author, Angie Thomas, began writing in response to\u00a0the fatal shooting in Oakland, California in 2009 of 22-year-old Oscar Grant. She quickly found the subject too painful, so Thomas set the book aside. After the stories of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice broke the news,\u00a0Thomas knew she had to\u00a0start writing\u00a0this book again. Thomas had to voice her opinions, had to acknowledge the neighborhood where she grew up, and needed to shine a light on Black Lives Matter. The themes of social justice, opinion, responsibility, existing in two worlds, and violence are so prevalent and deeply explored in this book because Thomas knows what she is talking about. She lived it.<\/p>\n This book has been optioned for a film\u00a0and is in development. I can only hope that the movie is just as moving as the book was. The movie has the opportunity to further change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u00a0spend a lot of time reading review journals, magazines, and online blogs about books. This\u00a0helps me to\u00a0order the most\u00a0current books for\u00a0my sections\u00a0and\u00a0keeps me\u00a0aware of\u00a0other books that\u00a0are coming out\u00a0across the whole library.\u00a0The Hate U Give came across my radar as a book to recommend to teens about gun violence. Based on[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[361,10,1,8],"tags":[778,155,4196,4194,1517,1649,248,4195,4197,1884,3651,847],"class_list":["post-30882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-drugs","tag-family","tag-gangs","tag-gun-violence","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-love","tag-police-brutality","tag-rap","tag-shooting","tag-social-justice","tag-young-adult"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-826","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30882"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30897,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30882\/revisions\/30897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}