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Book review: The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas 📚

 

The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas (3/10🌟)

This book has been on my tbr since before I moved to the UK. It seemed like I couldn't escape the hype, the reviews, the praise and so in typical me fashion I waited until the hype had died down before picking up a copy from the library. 
As someone who lived  in the US through a lot of US news coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement the names Angie lists in the end are more than familiar to me. So is the code switching and the language that's used; it's all things I've read before and therefore I was desensitized to the scenes of violence. I knew what to expect when I picked up this book. I was neither disappointed nor emotional while reading this book mainly because this is yet another form of art with black characters that deals with race, grief, family and violence and to be brutally honest I'm a bit bored with it. The writing style is okay and the characters are multi-dimensional, but all in all it made me realise that in my lifetime of reading I've only read eighteen books (thirteen of which were parts of two different series) with black characters in them (and only four of them are kick ass) and I desperately need to change that. 
 A part of me wonders if the hype was due to the need for the diversity box to be checked by the US literary community, while at the same time I do understand the praise it's garnered and I do think it's an empowering read for fans of YA in the US, but racism is very different in the UK, for one thing it's micro aggressive and subtle unlike the US, where it's constantly on display due to Americans complicated history of ignoring how it treats minorities. But the reason that I think this book is worth reading, despite my low rating, is because for the first time in US history conversations about race are taking place, slowly but surely, and this book is a part of that conversation.
If you want to know what racism is like in the US then I recommend this book, but I caution you to remember that black character aren't just designed to be stuck in stories centred around race and violence and to prove that I highly recommend that you read Carry On: The Rise And Fall Of Simon Snow by Rainbow Rowell instead.

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