To break up the silence | Angie Thomas "The Hate U Give"

Author: Angie Thomas

Title: The Hate U Give 

The Hate U Give is Angie Thomas's debut novel. It's a pity it wasn't translated and published in my country yet, but finding English version was very easy so I could read that interesting book.

It's a story about Starr. She's sixteen and she is spreading her life into two worlds - a poor neighbourhood where she live and her posh high school. One day, when she is coming back home from the party, Starr becoming the only witness of Khalil's (who is her best friend) death. He was shot by a policeman.

In a novel we can find a lot of emotions. We follow the main character in her pain, which is connected with her lose, injustice and incompherension of death that shouldn't happened. We're with Starr in the moments of fear and facing the decision if she should become Khalil's voice or not when media presented him as a criminal.

The author shows a lot of different attitudes including the will to make a policeman not guilty and total insensitivity to death of young innocent man. In the same time she add to the novel a lot of humoristic parts, which are funny, but they're not making a book ridiculous or taking away the strenght of the story.

The Hate U Give talks about racism in an uncompromising way. The book shows how it affects people who want to fight with it, but in the same time they can even create a two pictures of themselves to run away from stereotypes.

I think The Hate U Give is a novel worth to read. I can write that I don't like youth adult book how many times I want to, but it doesn't change the fact that it is possible to find in that type a stories like Thomas's one. Important, well written and valuable.