The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas  

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor black neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, Khalil’s death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Starr’s best friend at school suggests he may have had it coming. When it becomes clear the police have little interest in investigating the incident, protesters take to the streets and Starr’s neighborhood becomes a war zone. What everyone wants to know is: What really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does- or does not- say could destroy her community. It could also endanger her life.
Excerpt taken from book flap.

Language

F***-91

S***- 199

A**- 78

D***- 103

H***- 93

B****- 14

Bas****- 2

Derogatory terms-

C***-1

Ho

Negro

Nigg**

Hood rats

Thot.

Religious cursing-

G**- 31

L***- 15

Black jesus– Said in prayers but also curses

J****- 1

Jokingly flipping off

Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking

At a party there is a hazy air smelling like weed.   

At a teen party the punch is spiked strongly.  A young woman sips her drink then spits it out.  

“Molly” is a pill that the teens take.

A mom tries to get clean. Then will take “one” hit and it starts all over again.  

After a group of boys come into a store and buy all the chips, a man tells them it’s too early to be that blazed.  One of them “licks his next blunt” as he leaves.

An old woman buys cigarettes.  

A man puffs a cigar.  

A young man is selling crack.  He wants help getting out.

Cigarette butts and liquor bottles litter a park.  

An old woman smokes cigarettes.

Two teens sell drugs at a park.  

A man is drinking a beer.

A grandma is an alcoholic.  This is referred to multiple times.  When her kids were young she would get drunk and scream at them and say hurtful things.  

A man smokes a cigar.

An apartment smells of cigarette smoke because many adults smoked.  

A homeless man always asks for cash to buy liquor.

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

“Guys…grind so close to girls they just about need condoms.”

A young woman thinks to herself that there will probably be a lot of babies conceived on the night of a party.

A young woman remembers taking baths as a kid with her friend.  They referred to each others parts as “wee wee” and “wee ha.”

A mom and uncle walk in on two teens kissing.  

A boyfriend sticks his hand up his girlfriend’s shorts.  He “gets her going” then pulls out a condom even though they’ve agreed not to take it that far.  

Two young women briefly talk about sex drives.  

A reference is made to a bench that, “way too many babies have been made on.”

A teen couple are making out and her mom walks in on them.  

Two parents go in their room and shut the door.  They turn the TV on really loud. Their kids know they’re having sex but there are no details.  The kids make funny comments like, “They’re too old for that.” and “If she ends up with a fetus in her uterus….”

A young man pulls his girlfriend onto his lap so she is straddling him.  They kiss.

A mom shows her kids what their dad did in high school to get her attention.  She grabs her crotch and licks her lips, making fun of him.

A young woman starts kissing her boyfriend.  She notices the bulge in his pants and unzips them to get to it.  He stops her.

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

At a party, someone brings a gun and starts shooting.  

A couple is pulled over.  The cop makes the driver get out of the car.  He then goes back to his car. The driver starts talking to his friend in the passenger seat and is shot three times.  The passenger gets out, screaming and tries to stop the blood. She sees her friend die then the officer pulls the gun on her.   During this story she makes a reference to another friend that had been shot years before. She later remembers all the blood. It is on her hands, hoodie, shoes.

The friend from years before was quite a bit younger.  They were playing outside in the water of a broken fire hydrant.  Someone shoots a gun out of their car window and most dive for the ground or bushes.  One young girl is killed. Her friend remembers her blood mixing with the hydrant water.  

A young man complains to his dad and his wife about his mom and her boyfriend.  The boyfriend hits the three children and also the mom, the mom will throw him out but let him come back again.  The boyfriend hits the girlfriend regularly.

Shots are heard in a neighborhood, presumably a drive-by shooting.

A young woman claims to have “clocked her a**” but no details.  

A garbage bag is found at the park full of live puppies.  

A man has two tear tattoos on his face representing two lives he’s taken.  

A father tells the story of his cousin being killed.  It was a drug deal turned robbery. He was shot in the head twice, in front of the father.  

While eating dinner, a family hears machine gun fire.  They watch the news and there are about one hundred people asking for justice for a death.  The cops eventually use tear gas. Police cars are set on fire, a gas station gets looted and the owner is bloody.  

Two gangs rule the west side of town.

Two gang members get out knives and demand phones, sneakers and anything of value.  An opposing gang member runs up, shows his gun sticking out of his pants and threatens them.  

A man gets a gun when someone asks to be let in to his closed grocery store.

A gang leader says a gang member needs to “handle” the guys that killed his brother.  His brother was killed by an opposing gang. They shot him in the back.

Some gang members drag two cops out of their car and “jump” them, stomping on them.  

An older black man has a large scar on his abdomen because a white man sliced it when he drank from the water fountain assumed to be designated for whites.  

Two black men are arguing outside when a black and a white police officers pull up.  For no apparent reason they shout at him, making him get on the ground and search him.  At the last minute they back off and drive away.

A tank rolls down the street of a neighborhood after curfew.  A manned rifle is on top.

Five gang members attack an old man that spoke out on tv.  He is beaten pretty badly but ok.

A man throws a teen against the wall by his neck.  The teen is being hunted by a gang leader and the man needs to know why.  The boy stole $5,000 from the leader.

A father spends three years in jail for a drug deal.  He takes the blame although another man was there selling with him.  

A man comes to talk to another man.  The other man has his hand on his gun that’s in the waist of his pants.  

A young woman worries a gang leader will “mess her up.”

While watching tv, a car drives by and shoots at a family home.  The window shatters, the family jumps to the ground and the dad runs to the door and shoots after them.  A neighbor runs over to help holding his own gun. Later two opposing gang member some to guard the house with guns.  

A teen girl hits her friend in the head for saying hurtful comments.  That friend grabs her hair and they slap and claw and shove. One of their brothers grabs the other girl and curses at her so the other girl’s brother starts hitting him.

A young man is beat up, bleeding on a white carpet.  He has multiple bruises on his face and a swollen, broken nose, also cracked ribs.  A young woman tried to intervene in the fight and she was shoved violently.

A group of teens go to a riot.  People are breaking cop car windows, flipping it over then set it on fire. People throw rocks into store windows. Looting starts and the stores are on fire.  People throw rocks and bottles at the police who show up with tanks. At another riot, a young woman is given a bullhorn. She works up the crowd, police throw tear gas and she throws it back.  Later, while hiding out in a store, a flaming bottle is thrown in and it starts on fire.

Two men go at each other, hands on guns.  A young woman wants to get a bat and beat a man.  

Potentially Intense Themes

A young man’s grandma has cancer.  

At a funeral for a teen, another teen describes how his body looks.  She remembers another friend’s funeral and how she squeezed her hand to get her to wake up then her dad  had to drag her out because she was screaming for her to wake up. At that same funeral, the girl’s mom passed out when she saw her child’s body.  

The main character has multiple dreams about her two dead friends.  They usually involve blood, guns and how their bodies looked.

A mother tells a story about her baby not breathing when she was born.  The baby ended up being OK.

A black girl and a white boy are dating and her dad has a huge problem that the boyfriend is white.  

Life where the kids live can be heartbreaking.  A lot don’t have enough food, a lot don’t have electricity, or get beaten by family, they hear gunshots regularly, gang life is almost a way out- they have money, food and care.