The Hate You Give- Book Review
Books are said to be portals into universes where happy endings come often, Cupid goes around shooting everyone with arrows of love and rarely do we choose to sit with a book one that causes discomfort.
They are what we snuggle up with in our favourite corners and a cup of hot tea and come to for shelter when humanity fails us.
T.H.U.G. is not one of those ‘fun’ books. It is the book that shows inadequacies in the system without prejudice or fear and inspires change. T.H.U.G., or The Hate You Give is a novel that brings to the spotlight the police brutality and racism against the Black community, echoing the message of #BlackLivesMatter and it does so brilliantly.
It is a book that left me feeling all kinds of emotions- from anguish and sorrow to hope and contentment. With Starr Carter, I was a woman of colour in her journey, a journey where accents change with the neighbourhoods and slang is equated with being ‘ghetto’; sounding ‘black’ is as much a crime as sounding ‘white’ for her and seeing a loved one being killed for being a racial minority is just something she is expected to ‘get over’ and not speak out about.
The title itself is testimony to that. Inspired by Tupac’s motto, THUG LIFE means ‘The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone’. The author, Angie Thomas gives an insight into this beautifully in the book.
In less than 500 pages, she brilliantly navigates through what life is like for a racial minority, wherein playing rap music and saying ‘Nah’ instead of ‘No’ or ‘ain’t’ instead of ‘isn’t’ allows people to treat you poorly.
This book is a warm hug for people of colour and all minorities who are discriminated against, and a reality check for everyone who refuses to accept the gravity of this. We all feel entitled enough to ignore things like this just because we can and we think it doesn’t affect us, when in reality the more we remain silent about it, the more we are handing over the power to those who do such wrongdoings even today and get away with it.
Honestly, how many of us still remember the name George Floyd, or care about the injustice against Breonna Taylor? How many of us can even name more than those two victims because they didn’t go “viral” on social media?
This book is about all of them and then some.
This book is about learning to stand up for yourself, acknowledging that it can feel wrong to do so sometimes, but continuing nonetheless.
In the author’s words,
” Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”
This book is eye-opening in a way that doesn't feel intimidating, and it is thought-provoking in the best way possible. This is what makes ‘The Hate You Give’ probably one of the easiest book recommendations I can give to you.
P.S. there is now a movie adaptation of this by the same name, which is also a great watch.
