The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it tells a story that needs desperately to be told. It is the tale of the shooting -- murder? -- of a young black man at the hands of a white police officer. The circumstances of the shooting are familiar to those who read the news frequently: The victim was unnecessarily pulled over. He was unarmed. He was not an apparent threat to anyone's safety. And his killer, the officer, was absolved of any wrong doing. But fiction has a way of reaching people in a different, perhaps more personal way.

At least good fiction. And I'm not sure what this is. Though the story is a compelling one, the way the story is conveyed is less so. For example, the author tries very hard to create characters that upend expectations we might have for them. But the way she does it is cliched; as a result, the characters seem like mere tropes. The main character, Starr, is born of parents who worship Black Power heroes -- but, gasp!, she is dating a white guy. Chris, that white guy, is uber rich and privileged, but, really?!, his feelings for Starr seem genuine and sincere. He's even willing to go to her neighborhood to protest! Her father, Maverick, is an ex-con gang member who, no way!, is committed to improving his community. The result is that these characters feel more like cardboard cutouts than real people. Second, the author relies much to heavily upon dialogue to advance the story. There is little description or inner thinking. It's almost all dialogue that, to me, felt contrived. Third, the author comes right out and says everything. There is no showing --- it's all telling. An example: At one point, Starr's friends and family from her neighborhood meet her friends from the fancy school she attends. She writes, "My two worlds just collided. Surprisingly, everything is all right," and, later, "These cultural differences are crazy sometimes." This is the type of thing that a more gifted writing would leave for the reader to infer on their own. I'm thinking of the way Sherman Alexie does this so deftly in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Thomas doesn't really make the reader do any thinking -- it's all spelled out clearly in black and white. Finally, and I don't want to give away too much here, Starr's trajectory is just to neatly packaged to seem realistic.

All of which is a shame -- I really wanted to like this book.