The Hate U Give and Healing for Black Youth

I was on the fence about seeing The Hate U Give.

The Trump era has been rough for me and the few years proceeding it where we saw (literally, if you watched the videos posted online) one Black person after another get killed or harassed by the police left me with a rawness that hasn’t even begun to heal. As a result, I’m very cautious about my entertainment. I prefer to read the news instead of watch it. I read fiction for self-care, and most of the shows that I stream are either the 90s/2000s classics I grew up with (currently, Boy Meets World, Living Single, and Hey Arnold) or they’re about food. Or they’re New Girl.

However, I read The Hate U Give last year (at the beach, intentionally), and though the story was heartbreaking, it had lots of funny and mushy parts that brought me back to the Young Adult novels of my childhood. It’s one of the most important books of our time, and I’m glad that I read it. It was the lighter parts of the book that helped me make the decision to see the movie. Also, books are everything to me, so I tend to fangirl about authors. Me seeing the movie was also for Angie Thomas, and, you know what, for Black girl literature as a whole.

Like most movies, The Hate U Give left out a lot of parts from the book. It’s 464 pages long, so I understand. The movie is well-done. It’s no less real or pivotal than the book. But it is different. While the book left me feeling empowered and a bit hopeful, the movie, particularly Amandla Stenberg’s amazingly raw portrayal…