Starr's identity as the witness is initially kept secret from everyone outside Starr's family, including her younger brother Sekani. The media portrays Khalil as a gang banger and drug dealer, while portraying the white officer who killed him more favorably. Khalil's death becomes a national news story. Widely feared in the neighborhood, King now lives with Seven's mother, Seven's half-sister Kenya, who is friends with Starr, and Kenya's little sister, Lyric. Maverick was only allowed to leave his gang, the King Lords, because he confessed to a crime to protect gang-leader King. Following his release, Maverick left the gang and became the owner of the Garden Heights grocery store where Starr and her older half-brother Seven work. Carlos was a father figure to Starr when her father, Maverick, spent three years in prison for gang activity. Starr agrees to an interview with police about the shooting after being encouraged by her Uncle Carlos, who is also a detective. The officer assumes he is grabbing a gun and shoots Khalil three times, killing him. The officer instructs Khalil, who is black, to exit the car while outside the car, Khalil leans into the driver-side window to check in on Starr and to grab a hair brush. They are stopped by a white police officer. After a shooting breaks up a party Starr is attending, she is driven home by her childhood best friend and sometimes crush Khalil. Starr Carter is a 16-year-old black girl, who lives in the fictional mostly poor black neighborhood of Garden Heights, but attends an affluent predominantly white private school, Williamson Prep. Since its publication, Thomas has become an example of attempts by publishers to publish more young adult African-American novelists. The 464-page book was published on February 28, 2017, when the industry was attempting to address a decade-long stagnation in the number of children's books by African-American authors. 20th Century Fox optioned the film rights the following month. In February 2016, HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray bought the rights to the novel in an auction, outbidding 13 other publishing houses, and signed a two-book deal with Thomas. Unsure whether publishers would be interested in the Black Lives Matter-inspired material, Thomas reached out to literary agent Brooks Sherman on Twitter in June 2015 to ask for advice. Events surrounding the killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Michael Brown, and widespread ensuing protests against racism and police brutality, also informed moments in the book. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland drew Thomas back to expand the project into a novel, which she titled after Tupac Shakur's "THUG LIFE" concept: " The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody". Speaking to her hometown newspaper, Thomas said, "I wanted to make sure I approached it not just in anger, but with love even". While writing the short story, the project quickly expanded, though Thomas put it aside for a few years after graduation. Shaken by the 2009 police shooting of Oscar Grant, then-college student Angie Thomas began the project as a short story for her senior project in Belhaven University's creative writing program. The novel was also adapted into an audiobook, won several awards and praise for its narrator, Bahni Turpin. The book was adapted into a film by 20th Century Fox in October 2018, which received positive reviews. These themes, as well as the vulgar language, attracted some controversy and caused the book to be one of the most challenged books of 20 according to the American Library Association.
THE HATE YOU GIVE GOODREADS CODE
In writing the novel, Thomas attempted to expand readers' understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as difficulties faced by black Americans who employ code switching. It won several awards and received critical praise for Thomas's writing and timely subject matter. The book was a commercial success, debuting at number one on The New York Times young adult best-seller list, where it remained for 50 weeks. The Hate U Give was published on February 28, 2017, by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, which had won a bidding war for the rights to the novel. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas.