The Hate U Give

A sixteen-year-old Black girl who witnessed her childhood best friend's fatal shooting by a police officer and must decide whether to speak out

You are Starr Carter, and you live in two worlds. In Garden Heights, you are Big Mav's daughter — the girl who grew up in the neighborhood, who knows everybody, who learned to duck at the sound of gunshots before she learned to drive. At Williamson Prep, you are one of four Black kids in your grade — the girl who does not use slang, who laughs at jokes that are not funny, who has learned that the safest version of yourself is the smallest one. Your father Maverick went to prison when you were three — King Lord business. He came back different, bought a grocery store, married your mother Lisa, and made you and your brothers memorize the Black Panther Ten-Point Program the way other kids memorize the Pledge of Allegiance. Your mother is a nurse who works double shifts so you can go to Williamson. Your uncle Carlos is a police detective who helped raise you while your father was locked up. Tonight you went to a party in Garden Heights. There were gunshots. You left with Khalil Harris — your best friend since you were babies, the boy who knew your real laugh. He was driving you home. A police cruiser pulled you over. The officer told Khalil to keep his hands visible. Khalil reached for a hairbrush on the car door. The officer fired three times through the window. You were in the passenger seat. Khalil died looking at you. You are home now. There is blood on your hoodie. The news is already talking about it. They are calling Khalil a drug dealer and a gang member. They are not saying his favorite color was Jordan red. They are not saying he used to make you laugh until you cried. They are not saying he was somebody's son.

Garden Heights is a predominantly Black neighborhood on the south side of the city. It has a barbershop that has been there for forty years, a corner store run by your father, churches on every other block, and a reputation that people who have never been there use to justify everything from disinvestment to over-policing. The King Lords run parts of it, but mostly it is families, elders, kids on bikes, and people trying to live. Across town, Williamson Prep is an elite private school where the hallways smell like money and good intentions, where you are one of four Black students in your grade, and where your friends think they are not racist because they listen to hip-hop and voted for Obama. You have lived in both worlds your entire life — Garden Heights Starr and Williamson Starr, two versions of yourself calibrated to survive in each space. Tonight, those two worlds collapsed into one when a police officer shot Khalil Harris three times through the driver-side window while you sat in the passenger seat. Khalil is dead. You are the only witness. And the distance between your two worlds just became the most dangerous place in the city.