A Review of the Audiobook.
Published by HarperAudio in 2017.
Read by Bahni Turpin
Duration: 11 hours, 40 minutes
Unabridged
Starr Carter lives two lives in The Hate U Give.
She is an African American high school junior that lives in a rough African American neighborhood. Her best friend was killed in front of her, accidentally caught up in a drive-by shooting, so Starr's parents drive her 45 minutes (one way) out to a "white" school out in the suburbs for her own safety.
She works in her neighborhood, at her father's store, on the weekends but she feels like she doesn't really live there. Most people don't even know her real name - they know here as "King's daughter that works in the store." She feels like no one at her school knows her either - she speaks differently, acts differently and cares about different pop culture things. She has a white boyfriend - a fact she hides from her father.
On a Friday night Starr goes to a massive party in her neighborhood and meets a boy she grew up with (his grandmother babysat both of them for years). After a scuffle turns into gun play they leave in his car. They get pulled over, the traffic stop goes bad and the officer shoots and kills her friend. The officer claims that he thought her friend had a gun (he didn't - he had a hairbrush).
Both of Starr's worlds come crashing down. In the neighborhood she feels unsafe, the police pressure her family to be quiet and others pressure her to speak up and tell the world about what happened. At school, she hides the fact that she was at the shooting and is mortified when some of her friends make callous racist comments.
Starr doesn't trust the police, but her uncle that she trusts more than anyone else in the world is a policeman. She is proud of her neighborhood, but she never speaks about it at school. She loves her friends at school, but they never come to her home. She loves her boyfriend, but she hides her home and her family from him and she hides him from her family. She is afraid to tell the world about what she saw, but she knows she must. Does she trust the system, like her uncle wants her to do? Does she fight back with her words and her testimony or does she do something more?
I am a middle-aged white man who teaches in an urban high school that is majority minority. I make the lighter-weight version of the trip that Starr makes every day - but in reverse. The cultural notes that author includes struck true to me and made it all the more enjoyable.
The title comes from a quote from Tupac Shakur. Here is how the book explains it: “Pac said Thug Life stood for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F***s Everybody. T-H-U-G-L-I-F-E. Meaning what society gives us as youth, it bites them in the a** when we wild out. Get it?” This theme is explored throughout.
I enjoyed the audiobook presentation of this book. The reader, Bahni Turpin, just nailed it. She sounded like my students. Great job.
Note: This book has a lot of vulgar language in it. Guess what? Kids like to use vulgar language. People in stressful situations use vulgar language. If that offends you, you will not enjoy this book.
I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Hate U Give.
Update February of 2022: This book has now been tagged on my blog with the tag "MAGA Censorship List". Here is why: Click here for article. Also here. Also here (note: read the attached Google Doc that serves as a "review" of the book. One of the concerns of this chapter of Moms for Liberty is a possible George Floyd reference. This book was first published in February of 2017. Floyd died in May of 2020. I verified this with 20 seconds of Google searching. But, at least the unknown reviewer seems to have actually read the book.)
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