the hate u give book report prezi

The Hate U Give

By angie thomas.

• The Hate U Give Summary

The novel opens on 16-year-old protagonist Starr Carter attending a spring break party with her friend, Kenya . Starr’s family lives in Garden Heights, a predominantly black and impoverished urban neighborhood, but she and her brothers attend a ritzy and mostly white private school forty-five minutes away. At the party, Starr is acutely aware of the double-sided personality this lifestyle engenders: she tries not to act “ghetto” at school, but neighborhood kids accuse her of abandoning them for white friends. Starr has just started to catch up with Khalil —her best friend from childhood, who has entered the dangerous world of drug dealing since Starr began attending prep school—when a gang dispute leads to a dancefloor gunfight. Starr and Khalil flee the scene and are pulled over by a police officer for driving with a broken taillight. The officer pats Khalil down and walks back to his car. When Khalil opens his car door to ask Starr if she’s okay, the officer opens fire, and Starr watches her friend die.

The grief, confusion, anger, and fear that Starr must deal with in the aftermath of Khalil’s death make her initially unwilling to identify herself as the sole witness of the night’s events. As time passes, however, she loses her reluctance, serving as part of the police department’s investigation, speaking to the local defense attorney, and hiring a lawyer from a local activist group. Starr ultimately embraces activism herself by advocating for justice for Khalil on a nationally-televised interview and brazenly joining street protests after a grand jury fails to indict the officer who shot Khalil. Throughout the weeks that follow Khalil’s death, Starr must grapple not only with her own guilt and trauma, but also with white classmates who use the event as an excuse to get out of class or imply that the officer had done society a favor by shooting a drug dealer. She hides her involvement from her Williamson friends and her white boyfriend, Chris , before the truth comes bubbling up and Starr realizes which of her friends are worth keeping.

The tragedy of Khalil’s death tears through a neighborhood already fragmented by drugs and violence from deeply entrenched gangs. Starr’s father, Maverick, is a former gang member who spent time in prison before he could extricate himself from the street life. His long-standing feud with Kenya’s father, King —a gangster who effectively runs the neighborhood—puts Starr’s family in constant danger. Tensions arise between Maverick and his brother-in-law Carlos ; Carlos was Starr’s first father figure while Maverick was locked up. The tense situation is further complicated because Carlos is a cop serving on the same force as the officer who shot Khalil. Torn between the protective impulse he feels for Starr and the loyalty he has towards his career, Carlos helps Starr see that police cannot be characterized as generally corrupt or bad people.

Starr’s mother, Lisa, argues with Maverick about whether the family should move out of Garden Heights. At first, Maverick is opposed because he believes he can best improve Garden Heights when he is living in it; Lisa counters that their family’s safety is a priority and that Maverick can continue to use the grocery store he owns in the neighborhood as a means to help the community. Ultimately, the family moves to the suburbs, but Starr’s brother Seven—who lives with Kenya and King—remains torn between the urge to stay and protect his mother and sisters, and the desire to attend college outside of the city. Meanwhile, a newly initiated gangbanger named DeVante turns to Maverick for help in getting out of the gang; he ends up living with Carlos.

The tensions and feuds running through the novel come to a head with the grand jury decision over whether to arrest the officer who shot Khalil. When the jury fails to indict, protests and riots take over Garden Heights. King takes advantage of the chaos to set fire to Maverick’s store while Starr, Chris, Seven, and DeVante are trapped inside. With Maverick’s help, they manage to escape; the neighborhood turns on King, getting him arrested for arson. With the promise of Carlos’s protection, DeVante agrees to serve as witness to King’s drug-dealing schemes, removing him from the neighborhood’s gang scene and ending his abuse towards Kenya and Seven’s mother. Maverick also grows to accept Chris, inviting his daughter’s boyfriend to go boxing with him. The novel ends with Starr making a promise to Khalil’s memory: she won’t remain silent, and will continue fighting against injustice.

The Hate U Give Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Hate U Give is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does Starr feel about being at the party

Starr feels invisible and uncomfortable at the party. She seems different from everyone else because she goes to a different school, dresses differently, and she is really not into drugs or alcohol.

The Hate You Give

Seven's living arrangements change for a few reasons, the first being his desire to protect his sisters. More importantly, Seven's relationship with his mother is strained, and his mother's relationship with King doesn't help matters. Seven feels...

What page is this quote from

What chapter is this in?

Study Guide for The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give study guide contains a biography of Angie Thomas, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Hate U Give
• The Hate U Give Video
• Character List

Essays for The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

• Inequality Merges With Truth: Societies at Odds in 'The Hate U Give'
• 'The Hate U Give': A Critique of Modern Day American Society
• The Relationships: the Building Blocks of Life

Lesson Plan for The Hate U Give

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Hate U Give
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Hate U Give Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Hate U Give

• Introduction
• Development and publication

The Hate U Give

Angie thomas, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Racism and Police Brutality

The Hate U Give follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter after she witnesses the killing of Khalil Harris , her unarmed black friend, by a white police officer. Though this specific moment of police brutality spurs the action of the novel, author Angie Thomas also presents excessive force as part of a larger tapestry of racism and the criminalization of black communities in America as a whole.

Police brutality is such a reality in Starr’s world that…

Dueling Identities and Double Consciousness

Starr feels pulled between two worlds throughout The Hate U Give —namely, that of the poor, primarily black Garden Heights and the affluent, primarily white Williamson Prep. Thomas explores the tension felt by characters of color who must navigate the boundary between who they are and how the outside world portrays them. In doing so, she evokes scholar W. E. B. Du Bois’ famous notion of “double consciousness,” the sensation of “two-ness” experienced by black…

The Power of Language

From the lyrics of hip-hop to the teachings of the Black Panthers, language in The Hate U Give is a tool for education, justice, and speaking truth to power. Starr is initially hesitant to speak out about what she witnessed, fearing retaliation against her family and worrying that she is not worthy of speaking up for Khalil . Throughout the novel, however, she comes to understand her voice as the most powerful tool she possesses…

Community and Loyalty

Throughout The Hate U Give , competing loyalties test both individual characters and the communities to which they belong. Communities in the novel reveal a basic human desire for connection as well as the importance of ultimately dissolving boundaries in the fight for racial justice.

The King Lords and Garden Disciples are the most rigid examples of community in the novel. Each gang can be identified by specific colors, controls specific territories in the neighborhood…

The Cycle of Poverty and Crime

The Hate U Give depicts gangs, drugs, and violence as largely the result of lack of opportunity. The deck is stacked against many residents of Garden Heights, who may turn to gangs and drug dealing as their only means of supporting their loved ones and protecting themselves. This, in turn, traps the community in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime.

The cycle of crime is especially evident in Maverick , whose father was one…

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas review – racism and police brutality

An outstanding debut stages the debates convulsing America in the story of a teenager who testifies after a shooting

“G irls wear their hair coloured, curled, laid, and slayed. Got me feeling basic as hell with my ponytail. Guys in their freshest kicks and sagging pants grind so close to girls they just about need condoms ...” Then gunshots shatter the music. Fleeing from the party, 16-year-old Starr is led to apparent safety by her friend Khalil. Shortly after, their car is pulled over by a police officer. What happens next crystallises the Black Lives Matter movement and indeed, the whole debate about race in America. The unarmed Khalil is murdered – shot at point blank range by the man Starr refers to from this moment on as “Officer One-Fifteen”. Starr is the only witness to the crime and her 16-year-old shoulders have to bear the ferocious outrage of her race and community.

For her YA debut, Angie Thomas gives Starr a relatively stable home life – her father, “Big Mav”, is the proprietor of a downtown convenience store, and her mother is a nurse.She has two brothers, Seven and Sekani. The family own a pet dog, Brickz, and Starr gets to wear the expensive name-brand trainers of her choice. Starr’s parents have sent her to a school in the suburbs dominated by white middle-class students. Unbeknown to her father, she is dating Chris, a white boy from school who can recite the lyrics to the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air . To further confuse things, Starr’s Uncle Carlos is a cop who acted as a father figure while Big Mav served a three-year prison term during her childhood – a point of tension between the two men.

When she was 12, Starr’s parents instructed her on sex education – and on what to do if stopped by the police. “Keep your hands visible,” her father advised. “Don’t make any sudden moves.” It’s unnerving to read that part of the toolkit for raising a black child in America is to coach them on the dos and don’ts if confronted by the law.

What makes this novel so compelling is the way Starr negotiates the relatively safe world of school, where she assimilates despite the soft racism of one or two so-called friends, and how she navigates the dangers of her own neighbourhood, where it’s not uncommon to be caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. There is one chilling scene where Starr witnesses a police officer, in a revenge stop, force her father to lie on the ground as he searches him. “Face down,” the policeman yells, his hands never too far away from his gun, humiliating his victim even though Big Mav offers to show his ID and addresses the officer as “Sir”.

Finally, she summons up the courage to make a statement to a grand jury. The world outside waits to learn if the officer who killed Khalil will face charges. As the tension mounts, the reader suffers with Starr’s quite ordinary friends and family as they hurtle through extraordinary experiences and circumstances.

The first-person narrative is simply beautiful to read, and I felt I was observing the story unfold in 3D as the characters grew flesh and bones inside my mind. The Hate U Give is an outstanding debut novel and says more about the contemporary black experience in America than any book I have read for years, whether fiction or non-fiction. It’s a stark reminder that, instead of seeking enemies at its international airports, America should open its eyes and look within if it’s really serious about keeping all its citizens safe.

• Children and teenagers

Comments (…)

Most viewed.