Angie Thomas: The Hate U Give

 One thing I’ve learned as a writer is that we have to write what we know. Sometimes we can know things at a certain level through research, but often we just have to live it. My new novel is about a young girl who struggles with shyness and a lack of self-confidence, and her challenge was to gain the confidence she needed to stand up for a friend who was being abused. When I read Thomas’ novel The Hate U Give, I realized that in many ways the novel dealt with that same issue, yet I never could have written that novel. Thomas was able to write it because she had lived similar events to those in the novel. That’s why her novel is so important. 

 

Unfortunately, most of us grew up in a time when people like Angie Thomas were not given the opportunity to write and publish stories like these, so we only knew stories of people like ourselves. I will be forever grateful for writers who can enlighten me on how it is for those who did not experience life as I did. That’s progress. 

 

While I wrote a story which I believe will resonate with some young people, I realize that no one story will seem realistic to everyone. Like Starr in The Hate U Give, my novel portrays a young girl who has loving, supportive parents, but Alice is not a member of a minority in her school. I could not write that because I’ve never experienced it. Many other differences in the stories make it important that students have a variety of ways to look at similar struggles in their lives. 

 

Whether or not you’ve read her novel, I found an interesting interview with Angie Thomas that I thought you might like to listen to:  https://youtu.be/0FdvODgvISg .