Books, whatever their subject matter, create a snapshot of the time they were created in. They tell us what people were thinking about at the time they were written. The stories we choose to tell say a lot about who we are.[1]
Stories are how we create the narrative of our history. Books written today will be part of history and part of how we tell our history. News articles aren’t going to be read by the masses in 50 years, but novels are. Every high schooler in the United States reads The Great Gatsby, and its portrayal of “the Roaring Twenties” is generally how people picture that time period. As far as anyone living knows, that’s exactly what it was like (for wealthy white Americans in that region, anyway).
I’m not an expert, so I don’t know, but I wonder if it would be safe to say that the books that really last, the ones that will be added to the literary canon, are the ones that capture important cultural moments.
The Hate U Give will surely be one of those.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas follows Starr Carter’s life after she witnesses a white police officer murder her childhood friend Khalil. If you’re American and you’ve watched the news at all in the last five years, the story probably sounds familiar to you.
Thomas’s THUG does an amazing job of capturing this cultural moment that we’re in right now, documenting the discourse around the Black Lives Matter movement and the way police brutality affects the lives of real people. Starr and her community are fictional, but their story is real.
THUG is difficult to read, in the way news stories about cops killing black boys and men are. The book hits all the key points—the vilification of the victim, the exoneration of the murderer, the tone policing, the protests, all of it. It even references real events, like when Starr throws a tear gas canister back at the police, in homage to real-life activist Edward Crawford.[2] The frustration the characters—and I’m sure the real protesters—feel is palpable; the same talking points get churned out through the news, and we never seem to make any progress. Again and again and again.[3]
“I’ve seen it happen over and over again,” Starr says, “a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there” (34–35).
For people who don’t see themselves in the news stories about police brutality, it can be hard to understand the pain black communities feel. As one of Starr’s neighbors tells some police officers who harass Starr’s father: “This is our business” (194). Thomas makes it personal by giving us Starr’s story and by showing the murder from the perspective of the victim’s family and friends. We get to know Khalil through Starr, not through racist news coverage. She shows us who he really was.
“I stare at the two Khalils. The pictures only show so much. For some people, the thugshot makes him look just like that—a thug. But I see somebody who was happy to finally have some money in his hand, damn where it came from. And the birthday picture? I remember how Khalil ate so much cake and pizza he got sick. His grandma hadn’t gotten paid yet, and food was limited in their house” (339).
In an interview on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Amandla Stenberg, who plays Starr in the 2018 film adaptation of THUG, describes the book as “a tool of empathy.”
“So, oftentimes we see these events portrayed on the news and in media, but usually they’re misconstrued, or they’re at least postulated so they don’t fully humanize the people of color who are killed and affected by these events. And so that’s what this is supposed to be a tool to do, it’s supposed to ground it in a personal narrative, and hopefully people will have a sense of empathy because of that.”
I think THUG largely speaks for itself and doesn’t need me doing any analysis. I’ll leave it at this: It’s real. It accurately captures this cultural moment, for posterity. Everybody needs to read it.
Books in the American literary canon are said to have a certain aesthetic appeal and universal themes—meaning “well-written” and “relatable.” That’s the idea anyway. But, as many people have noted, the western literary canon is mostly a compilation of books written by white men. If aliens touched down on Earth and were given a typical high school reading list, they would be missing out on a lot of the diversity of the human experience.
THUG tells of a human experience that I’m sure a lot of people would rather ignore or push to the side. But we shouldn’t look away or cover our ears. It takes Starr a while to find her voice, but she finally speaks out in the end. And I think we all should listen. When someone—or an entire group of people—say they are in pain, I think we should listen.
THUG is a sure classic. I hope it is on every high school reading list. It belongs right next to Beloved and The Great friggin’ Gatsby. I hope it replaces A Separate Peace, because that book sucks. The Hate U Give is an incredibly important book, and well-written besides, and like Stenberg, I implore everyone to read it, right now, and to remember something Starr’s father told her:
“True, but unless you’re in his shoes, don’t judge him. It’s easier to fall into that life than it is to stay outta it, especially in a situation like his” (170).[4]
The Hate U Give was published in 2017. Here is Angie Thomas’s website. The Hate U Give is available for purchase, and the movie is currently in theaters (as of November 24, 2018). Support your local bookstore if you can, or visit your local library!
[^1] Though not all that we are. The western literary canon, after all, has been compiled by straight white cisgender men. Our canon has been purposefully stunted by men in power.
[^2] He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, and unfortunately, he has passed away. Here are some articles about his legacy and his death:
- Edward Crawford: Ferguson, Mo., Activist in Iconic Photo Found Dead From Gunshot Wound
- Edward Crawford, protester from iconic Ferguson photo, dead from self-inflicted gunshot in St. Louis
[^3] Recently, a white woman falsely accused a nine-year-old black boy of groping her and threatened to have him arrested. There is a reason Angie Thomas evokes Emmett Till’s story in THUG.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.”
(The first two sentences of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
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