For this unit, I read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The book follows a fictional character named Starr Carter. She is a high school student and after going to a party, her friend Khalil gets murdered by the police. The story shows the aftermath of when something involving a police officer shooting an innocent Black person and racism. Starr witnesses racism every day, whether that occurs at school, when hanging out with people, and basically everywhere she goes. I loved the book and would give it a 10 out of 10.
The book used quite a bit of literary elements, including the setting, conflict, tone and mood, and plot. The book also had lots of dialogue.
Setting: The book used the setting to describe what was happening and where. The book frequently used terms like “the east side” and other sides of the neighborhood Starr lives in. The neighborhood she lives in is Garden Heights. She considers it the ghetto, although she rarely mentions it to anyone. The setting was important because of the time of racism and racial profiling in America today. Since where Starr lives is considered the ghetto, police would tend to patrol more in that area. The officer shot Khalil in that neighborhood after forcing him to get out of his car just because he was talking back.
Conflict: The whole book is centered around the conflict: police brutality and racism. One example of this would on page 111 when Starr is playing Basketball with her friends. While Starr was being distracted, her friend Hailey gets frustrated and yells to Starr “Hustle! Pretend the ball is some fried chicken. Bet you’ll stay on it then.” Personally, I would agree that this was extremely racist due to the fact that there are stereotypes for African Americans that they love watermelon and fried chicken.
Tone and Mood: The tone and mood of this book does an incredible job at showing the characters’ feelings. In part of the book, Starr’s brother, Seven, gets angry about the situation they are faced with and says to Starr “Starr, what you wanna do?” and Starr responds with: “Anything. Everything. Scream. Cry. Puke. Hit somebody. Burn something. Throw something… ‘I wanna do something,’ I say. ‘Protest, riot, I don’t care--...” (page 389)
Obviously, Starr and her brother are very angry and frustrated about the problems that they were being challenged with. The tone and mood does a good job because it’s clear that Starr is upset.
Plot: The plot of the story is in sequential order most of the time. Starr does have flashbacks/dreams of her friend Natasha getting killed. This also happens with her memory of Khalil being shot. One night when she falls asleep, she has one of these nightmares about Natasha: “Natasha runs into the store again. ‘Starr come on!’ Her braids have dirt in them, and her once-fat cheeks are sunken. Blood soaks through her clothes. I step back. She runs up to me and grabs my hand. Hers feels icy like it did in her coffin. ‘Come on.’ She tugs at me. ‘Come on!’ he pulls me towards the door, and my feet move against my will. ‘Stop!’ A hand extends through the door, holding a Glock. Bang!” (141 and 142) The story has different parts to the story as well as chapters. There is a total of five parts. The parts do an exceptional job of spreading the story out and at the end of each part, it presents a good stopping point for readers.
The book has lots of dialogue throughout the story and grips in readers fast. For example, Starr and Khalil’s interaction with “Officer One-Fifteen”. In this interaction, a lot is said and it makes it easy to get lost in the story.
Overall, This book is extremely good. I would definitely recommend this book to young teens, especially teens of color. I would put a trigger warning, however. Even with the well-written storyline, the book can be intense at times and overwhelming. Also, there is strong language frequently used throughout the story, so I would recommend this book to high school students and higher.
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