I intentionally made Starr's uncle a cop because I have law enforcement in my family and I understand the struggle that black cops deal with particularly. All lives should indeed matter but we have a systemic problem in this country in which black lives do not matter enough. What has the reception to your book been so far?Ī lot of people are quick to say that saying “black lives matter” makes you anti-cop. So when I saw that in the video, it was like a sign. We see it in the form of anger and we see it in the form of riots. When these unarmed black people lose their lives, the hate they've been given screws us all. Everybody knows that as the tattoo he had, and recently it's become a funny thing on the Internet where somebody does something bad and you holler out, "Thug life!" But when I when I saw him explain what it means, it hit me that that’s not just in my book, but that's what we see in society. When we were trying to figure out a title for the book, I came across a YouTube clip of him discussing THUG LIFE. I’ve always been a huge Tupac fan and I often listen to him for inspiration or when I’m stuck. How did that become a reference point for the book and what does it mean to you? You're referring to Tupac’s concept of THUG LIFE - “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody” - in the book's title. And I found myself more angry and more frustrated and more hurt. Then I came back because Trayvon happened.
I put the book aside for a couple of years because it was so emotionally draining to write.
The hate you give tupac how to#
In my neighborhood, Oscar was “one of us,” but in my school, he “shouldn’t have done this or that,” or “he got what he deserved.” I felt a lot of anger, frustration, and hurt, and the only thing I knew how to do was write. Every day, I would make a 10-minute drive to school from where I lived, and I would hear two different conversations about Oscar. I was in college at the time, and a lot like Starr, I went to a mostly white, upper-class conservative school and I lived in what we can call the hood. I first got the idea for the book after the shooting death of Oscar Grant, a young man in Oakland, California. When did the idea for the book come to you? In the aftermath of Khalil’s death, Starr must decide if and how to speak up about her experiences from the traumatic night, knowing that doing so will change her life forever.īelow, Thomas explains why she likes to write for teens rather than adults, and how the Black Lives Matter movement and Tupac inspired her novel.
Starr has spent the last six years of her life being shuttled back and forth between her home in the poor, black neighborhood where she grew up and the predominantly white suburb where she attends an upscale private school. In Angie Thomas’ new novel The Hate U Give, 16-year-old Starr Carter witnesses the fatal shooting of her long-time friend Khalil by a police officer.