Angie Thomas (2017) The Hate U Give.

A remarkable debut novel. Often we conflate the narrator with the writer. Starr is sixteen. A black girl that goes to a school outside her district and ghetto. A coming-of-age drama. A love story. Inside and outside. Stories told in black and white. Class and entitlement, the embodiment of The American Dream and its flipside in the hood.

The Hate U Give seemed familiar. Biblical. The Hate You Give is the Hate You Get. Eye for an eye. Old Testament lore. A calling to account. The best books curl up inside you, because they resonate with your truth. Angie Thomas’s book doesn’t quite do that for me. But it may for you.

(Tu)Pac THUG LIFE (acronym) The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.

The inciting incident as jargon. What happened? Pow-Pow Plot. What happened next? Starr goes to a party with her half-sister. There’s a fight. Shots are fired. She flees with her childhood sweetheart, Khalil whom she’s not seen in a while.

‘When I was twelve, my parents had two talks with me.

One was the usual birds and bees. Well, I didn’t really get the usual version. My mom, Lisa, is a registered nurse…

The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me.’  

Officer’s badge number: 115. Officer Cruise. Three gangs in the hood, but only one occupying army with tanks and the power of US law at their back. Officer 115 shoots unarmed Khallil. White on black violence. White on black murder. Emmett Louis Till. His mom allowed his mutilated body be shown and photographed in his casket. His murderers boasted how they beat and tortured the little boy, and then drowned him. Why? Because he disrespected them. He dared to talk to a white girl in Mississippi. They were acquitted.

That was then. This is now. Black Lives Matter. Starr needs to find herself. Speak out for Khallil and demand justice. Her life is just beginning, his is ended.

Sometimes successful books, international bestsellers, are about timing. We know what happened next. But some of us have lived it. Shed your skin. This is a book that resonates beyond its porous borders. Read on.