Book Review: The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give is a novel by Angie Thomas.  It is a Young Adult genre novel and I found myself not being able to relate to it very much due to the fact that nothing in my own life has resembled what the book describes.  I struggled to read it until the end because of this.  I do realize after getting through the whole thing that I have grown up and lived with many advantages that I have taken for granted.
I ended up borrowing it from the library and reading it on the basis of someone on Youtube raving about the novel which is all I know about it when I started reading the first page.  The novel tackles a very heavy subject: racism; and it does a fairly good job.  There are many viewpoints expressed in the various characters so it does not fall into portraying this as a simple problem with a simple solution.  It traces the roots of poverty in the ghetto and shows how the culture tends to hammer down on anyone that rises up.  It is an effective story and most people who read this book will be moved.  It shows that choices make differences.  There is an element of the tragedy of the commons aspect to this.  The rage that has been stoked through centuries of injustice rages within the community comes out to disrupt the lives of everyone from time to time and as a result, this pushes those who would provide stability away.
The conclusion of the novel is that the black community has to come together and heal itself.  With regards to the vitriol about the act and the perpetrator, it is acknowledged and the plot demonstrates how anger can color decisions and actions and that in the end, there is no good that comes from allowing the anger to take over.  But anger is necessary to spur people to action.  The tome is an educative one for others to understand some of the nuanced realities of attitudes that are taken about the racism question.  There is not a lot of time spent on exploring whether the white policeman was really a racist and in the end it is left as an open question.  The resolution does not matter because there are some racist cops out there and to build the future, the black community has to find a way to deal with that fact, engage in getting reform and move on.  This novel is one step in that direction as it will likely become one of the standard high school reading texts, it is that good.  It explains in a human way, beyond the headlines, damage is sustained to families and the community if police are allowed to stop people on the street on the basis that they were walking while black.