The Hate U Give
Ratings546
Average rating4.5
Buku ini memberi pelajaran mengenai prasangka. Hanya Karena ulah segelintir org “kulit hitam” yg menjadi anggota geng & pedangang narkoba, tdk berarti pukul rata menganggap semua “kulit hitam” itu anggota geng & pedangang narkoba. Hanya Karena ulah segelintir “yang mengaku muslim” mengebom tempat ibadah agama lain atau berbuat anarkis tdk berarti seluruh muslim membagi paham yg sama.
Starr Carter menjadi satu-satunya saksi dari tragedi penembakan sahabatnya, Khalil, oleh seorang polisi. Padahal saat itu Khalil tidak bersenjata. Satu-satunya yang bisa menjawab adalah Starr. Yang akan ia katakan, bukan hanya bisa menghancurkan lingkungannya. Kemungkinan besar, itu bisa membuatnya terbunuh.
Buku ini membuatku teringat film My Name Is Khan. Orang itu ada yg baik & ada yg jahat. Ketika org itu berniat jahat, gk peduli agama apa dia, dia tetaplah bersalah.
Terrorism has no religion.
This book really was everything. I steeled myself going into it knowing I would cry, that I would get mad, but I didn't expect the humor and the hopefulness.
Angie Thomas shows the “everything” of an inner city neighborhood and the struggles of someone straddling both “worlds”. This wasn't just about an unjust murder. It was about the families. It was about the community. The rage, the helplessness and the absolutely terrifying feeling of any sort of contact with a police officer are there because that is also a part of how this neighborhood live. But Starr's family love each other, her parents are together despite setbacks and hardships and they have given their children unconditional love regardless of their genetics. Their neighborhood lifts them up when they need it.
I can't do it justice. I can't describe how much I loved this book for everything it made me feel. It's another book for the “people who need to read this won't” column, but I'm glad I did. I look forward to more.
If you like to put yourself in other people's shoes, thinking about situations different than your own, or want to realize that your way of thinking is not always correct then this book is for you.
Really good read that makes you think.
Wow. I went into this a bit worried that it would be a preachy “issues” book, but damn. No preachiness, just raw emotions and an amazing heroine (main character, but also literally a hero). I got involved with these people, I cried with them, and I almost missed my stop on the train because their lives seemed more real to me than my journey home.
4.5 • There's Them and then there's Us. Sometimes They look like Us and don't recognize They are Us.
Couldn't put it down, read the entire book in one weekend day. It may be a YA novel written by a Black woman, but it made this White, Jewish middle aged mom laugh, cry, get angry and above all else, think. Starr and her family and friends are unforgettable (maybe I could have lived without the saintly white boyfriend, but it was important to have a White view of the final climactic scene). This book deserves all of the accolades it is receiving. Whether you are 17 or 57, please read it.
Short Review: I think this is probably a 4.5 star books, but that isn't an option here, so I am rounding up. I have not read a lot of young adult books lately. But there is something to the somewhat simplified structure of most young adult books that can be clarifying. Police Brutality, racism and poverty are not simple topics. I have been reading a lot about racism and history this past year, but not a lot of fiction. History is important, but fiction is often what grabs the reader to create empathy. And there is a lot of perspectives that encourage empathy here.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/hate-u-give/
(There is language and sexual discussion that is appropriately contextual for an upper teen book. There is also realistic portrayals of violence. I think this is a good book to read for teens and discuss. But it won't be good for all teens.)
I can't really say I enjoyed this story, and that's for a number of reasons. The plot of this book focuses on Starr, who was with a black boy named Khalil when he is murdered by a white police officer. Throughout the book, she has to deal with the trauma of that and with, basically, living in a racist society and bringing together two different worlds - she goes to a wealthy, all-white school yet lives in an all-black “hood.” Starr goes through a lot, and it's tough and dark and unpleasant. She has good times with friends and family, of course, but there's a lot of darkness here. I guess I had two main issues with this book. One would be that the darkness, the trauma, is handled almost casually, and when Starr does have outbursts, it feels over-the-top. This book is taking on a very complex issue that is intertwined in our culture in more ways than can be described, and yet there's little nuance or subtlety reflected in this story. I think the reason for that is due to my second issue with the book: I really disliked the writing. It felt stilted, unedited, shallow, amateur. In creative writing classes I've taken, professors would always say, “Show, don't tell.” All this book does is tell. The language is clunky and unpolished. It was seriously a chore to read this book, and every time I went to pick it up, I was not excited due solely to the poor writing. I feel bad saying this because I think this story is important and should be told and should be published and should be read, but this may be some of the worst writing I've encountered.
Powerful. This is a powerful story. I'm overwhelmed by the beauty and truth of Starr's story. Read this, everyone!
Angie Thomas' first novel marks her as someone to watch. I'm already jonesing for her next book.
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I'll be honest, the hype around this one turned me off initially. It just didn't seem like my kind of thing. But my wife bought a copy and tore through it and started telling everyone she came across that they needed to read it (especially those of us she lives with). When I saw the library had a copy of the audiobook, I snagged it, because I hadn't got that far on my TBR. By this time, I only remembered “YA,” “something about Black Lives Matter,” and “Mrs. Irresponsible Reader said I needed to.” Which is about as tabula rasa as one could get when coming to a book.
Our central character is Starr Carter. She attends a very nice private school in the suburbs of whatever unidentified city she lives in. She plays basketball there, has friends and a boyfriend and seems to be generally well-regarded by all. Then there's her “other life”, that has almost no relation to that one – she and her family live in a poor neighborhood where almost no one knows her by anything but “Mav's daughter what works at the store” (or something close to that). She has a friend or two in the neighborhood, but mostly works and then goes home. On one of the rare nights she goes out to do something social, she runs into her childhood best friend, Khalil, who she hasn't seen for a few months. Their reunion is cut short, sadly, while he drives her home and they're pulled over by a police officer for a routine traffic stop. I'll leave the details for you to read on your own, but essentially, her unarmed friend is shot repeatedly by the police officer in front of Starr.
In the days that follow Khalil's death is a nationwide story, Starr's being questioned by the police and is trying to keep her psyche intact while the wheels of justice grind slowly. There are problems at school, unforeseen challenges at home and in the neighborhood, add in the involvement with the criminal justice system and activists, and it's clear that neither of Starr's lives are going to be the same again.
Yes, this book is about the shooting of Khalil and the aftermath. But it's about more than that, too. Similar to the way you could say that To Kill a Mockingbird is about the trial Tom Robinson and its aftermath. There's a whole lot of other things going on in both books that are just as much a part of the essence as the shooting/trial. There's family growth and change, individual characters learning more about the world and changing, there's the evolution of localities and best of all, there are characters taking all of this in and exercising a little agency to change themselves – and impact everything in around them.
One thing I didn't expect was how fun this book would end up being. I laughed a lot – her father's strange theories about Harry Potter, her Fresh Prince of Bel Air obsession, the teasing between her friends, her family's very cut-throat approach to watching the NBA finals and trying to jinx each other's teams, are just a start. Even when it's not being out-and-out funny, there's a joie de vivre that characterizes the lives of these characters.
When they're not grieving, being threatened (by criminals or those who are supposed to be protecting them from criminals), being angered at the way that the system seems to be destined to fail them, or scared about their lives, that is. Because there's a lot of that, too. All of which is justified. The interplay between the emotional extremes speaks volumes to the authenticity of Thomas' work, and makes it much more effective than it could've been in less careful hands.
There are so few YA novels with healthy – or existing families – that Thomas should probably win an award or three just for having so many in one book. None of the families are perfect (though Starr's comes close), some push the boundaries of “dysfunctional” into something we need a new word for; but at the very least there were at least a core of people caring about each other and trying to help each other, in their own way.
Yes, there are political overtones – or at least ramifications – to this book, but this is first and foremost a human story and can be appreciated by humans from all over the political spectrum. Thomas, as far as I can tell, went out of her way to be fair and balanced. It'd have been very easy to paint some of these characters/groups as all evil, all good, all misunderstood, all [fill in the blank]. Instead, she took the more difficult, more honest, and much more interesting approach and filled the book with people all over the moral spectrum, no matter their profession, ethnicity, socio-economic background, education, etc.
A few words about Turpin's work. I loved it. She was just fantastic, and rose to the challenge of bringing this kind of book to life. Looking at her credits just now, that doesn't seem like much of a stretch for her – she's clearly a talented heavy-hitter on the audiobook front.
I laughed, I cried . . . it moved me. This is the whole package, really. It'll challenge you, it'll entertain you, and give you a little hope for tomorrow (while helping you despair about the time until tomorrow comes).
The Young-Adult novel for the Black Lives Matter movement, which has gotten a lot of hype. YA isn't usually my thing, but I was curious, and this did not disappoint. Engaging and perfect as audiobook, because you're in the head of a 16 year old girl, that witnesses the police shooting of one of her best childhood friends. White cop, black kid. Grief and sadness, anger and rage, gangs and drugs, stereotyping and prejudices, black neighbourhoods and race riots.
Damn, I did not know this book was so good. The story is real. Shit like this happens all the time and it's not okay. This book made me realise that even more.
I need to say that I hated officer one-fifteen. He was a freaking prick. Starr is such a strong character. She didn't even realised it herself, but she is. I loved the relationship of starrs parents. They are so cute together. Yeah, they are an OTP. Oh and f*ck Hailey.
The setting of the book is also real. I've never been in a ‘ghetto' so I don't know much about how close it is to reality, but it felt pretty close. I felt so bad for Maverick when things got down. He did not deserve that.
The only thing I have to say to people who didn't read the book yet, you should. This book is dang good and it needs to be read even more. Yeah, I know it's on number one in the New York Times bestselling list, but ya'll still need to read this!
Petition to update the U.S. public school curriculum by replacing The Old Man and the Sea with this much more relevant book
Bing-bang. Do what I did, and read, bing-bang, Just Mercy and then The Hate U Give, and, man-oh-man, you can't help but feel the hurt, the cruelty, the desperation, the all-pervading bleakness of the black underclass. And that along with the disappointment, the anger maybe, even complete hatred of the way the priviledged white ruling class has abused its power. Empathy. Whew. I walked in those shoes. Happily, I can take them off and resume my normal life, but what about those who can't?
This book was easy to read, in the sense that the writing was easy and I finished it in no time. It's one where I was reading it on my phone while walking because I was so into it.
This is one book where I feel its popularity speaks for itself. There are so many great reviews and articles and stories about it, and I can't help but feel that this is important. In terms of diverse books, books by and about black women, books about serious issues written for youth, books about police brutality and institutionalized racism. While not being the most well-written book I've ever read, it does acknowledge the nuance for Starr in things like code-switching and how it makes her feel, not being embarrassed or ashamed of dating a white guy but worrying about his ability to support or understand her when she starts to show him more of her black self, reconciling her fear of cops with the fact that her uncle is a cop...there's a lot of really great stuff in here, and even if it's not given a lot of depth in the story I hope it'll get people talking.
This was THE best, and I would love to see this become a classic. I'd love this to be read by anyone perplexed by BLM who is looking to really understand why people are angry and in pain. Which is not to say the book is only anger and pain, there's also hope and love.
~This review first appeared here on The Bent Bookworm!~I've been trying to write a review of The Hate U Give for weeks and weeks now. It's difficult to put my thoughts about it into a cohesive form, so I'm just kind of going to put a few things out there. Also, I'm aware that this book is HUGE because of it's subject matter and representation. I read it BECAUSE of that, because I know that I am in the majority and I want to understand what the minority goes through and feels. I realize a book will never give me a complete understanding, but I do think reading #ownvoices books can help. The entire point of reading is to learn and to travel and experience things in our mind that we can't or don't have the opportunity to experience in our place in the world.THUG is an important book because it so thoroughly places the reader into another person's shoes. Because it was written by someone who has been there. She didn't have to do research to see how Starr and her friends and family would talk – she knew, because her family is Starr's family, her town is Starr's town. This isn't someone from the outside looking in and writing about it, this is someone writing what they have seen right in front of them.Read The Hate U Give to see the world outside your comfort zone. Read it to understand why people have and do react the way they do to words, implications, and events. READ. IT.The truth casts a shadow over the kitchen—people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right. Maybe.The Great: - Angie Carter does a fabulous job of giving her characters unique voices. I could hear each character distinctly and it was amazing. I felt like I was following Starr around, eavesdropping.- I was completely immersed in the story. When the pivotal point of the story, the shooting, happened, I felt like I'd been sucker-punched. I felt sick. I had to put the book down and go compose myself. At first I tried reminding myself that it was just a book, but of course that didn't work because OH YEAH STUFF LIKE THIS HAPPENS PRETTY OFTEN and IN OUR WORLD and...yeah.- This book helped me understand a lot of things. It helped me see a lot of things for the first time. Every town I've ever lived in (except in Korea, heh) had two sides and I never completely understood why it was that way, when segregation was a thing of the past decades ago...supposedly. Starr's struggle to be more, her struggle with her feelings for Chris, and to bridge what seems to her (and to the reader) to be the two sides of her life, encapsulated everything I've ever been confused about or wondered why when it came to those two sides of town.- FAMILY. I freaking love Starr's family. Her parents' relationship isn't perfect but it's there. Her entire family – her blended family, there are step and half brothers and sisters in there too – is there for each other. They pull together. They may picker and fight but in the end they are there and it's amazing.The Other Thing:I, personally, was really disturbed by the wrecking of the town and the looting/destroying of property that went on during some parts of the book (mirroring, obviously, a lot of actual events as well). HOWEVER. What really came home to me was that while no, I didn't agree with the characters doing it, I finally understood to some extent why. I understood that it was a form of expressing how angry and scared Starr and her friends and neighbors were, of the injustice and prejudice that seem to meet them at every turn. Did that make it right? No. Starr even says so later. But I finally had some sense of why things like that happen.Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.Blog Twitter Bloglovin Instagram Google+