It's about how instead of standing in unwavering solidarity with the non-violent protests by Black Lives Matter in the face of actually violent, overtly discriminatory and often fatal actions by the police and demanding societal redress and justice, there will always be people who will decry and get enraged by it, people who will try to justify those injustices by any means to curb their own cognitive dissonance. It’s about how piles and piles of evidence showing sustained corruption and racism and literally hundreds of civilian deaths per year at the hands of the police is still somehow not enough to delegitimize a deeply flawed system. It's about what happens when racialized and marginalized communities stand up for their rights in any visible way whatsoever.

The Hate U Give is about institutional racism and a broken criminal justice system where the police can violate the civil rights of thousands of people publicly and openly with almost no consequence at all. See, I don’t know what it's like to be black in America, but I have 18 years of experience in being a brown Muslim woman and I can tell you this: being in the minority is like being stuck behind a glass wall and whenever an injustice occurs, you breathe onto it and you write it in HUGE letters in the condensation.but nobody seems to really see it. A reality in which justice is dead and the police kills black youth with impunity.Īnd so many other real stories I read about that truly made the atoms making up my body have enough of being anchored to this awful reality in this human form and wish to move on, become a light wave or something. A reality in which on any given day, some innocent person like Tommy Le can get shot hours before his high-school graduation because he was carrying a pen, or another innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car, and then three days later she is going to end up dead in jail, or a five years old child can get shot and wounded after the police kills his mother. In all honesty, The Hate U Give has made me realize just how simply clueless I was as to the continuing day-to-day actuality of systemic racism in America. “What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”

It was truly incredible and I have SO MUCH to say about it I wish I could actually just send everyone a howler containing the entire script of this book instead. This book has made me feel every single possible emotion at the same time.

When you're reading books like The Hate U Give, you're reading someone's decision against silence.

The hate you give angie thomas