I read the book, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas sometime during 2020. I did watch the movie first and even though the book will always be better, the movie did the book justice. I enjoy looking for differences between the two mediums so I bought the book. Finished it in a few hours or so even while knowing everything that was going to happen. Thomas used vernacular language yet managed to still be so dynamic, expressive and completely captivating with her descriptions and realistic characters that I held the hard cover four hundred and sixty four page book in one hand like nothing. While this book did not change my perspective on being against racism, police brutality, stereotypes, poverty, etc, it did make me feel a lot of heavy emotions throughout. One feeling that was persistent was despair because of how prevalent racism and police brutality is and how long the list of innocent black people being murdered by cops is; and that despite knowing that this should be stopped, many protests against it, we’re nowhere near seeing the end to it. Feeling despair at how normal it is. Other themes are identity, weaponizing stereotypes, racialized poverty, and one that’s not brought up as much is generational trauma. The full quote of T.H.U.G L.I.F.E is “the hate u give little infants f*cks everybody”. In the book, Khalil is a sweet and smart young man who is a childhood friend of Starr, who unfortunately became a drug dealer due to hard times and a dysfunctional family. The responsibility of being the breadwinner fell on him when his own mother became addicted to drugs and could no longer parent her own son.  Khalil then fulfilled a stereotype. Another example of this comes from the movie, where Starr’s younger brother, Sekani, a child who is eight years old is holding a gun pointing it at King, the leader of the King Lords gang in Garden Heights. This occurs because the father and King were about to pull their guns out at each other due to a dispute. Two cops pull up, two fully trained adult officers, point their firearms at the child. It is only when Starr stands in front of her brother do they put down their guns. The cycle was about to repeat itself again. This scene in the movie is very powerful because Sekani who’s too young to be experiencing that much hate, feels enough of it to do what he did, was about to fulfill another stereotype and be another statistic in only a few seconds. This is the scene where the full quote comes to fruition. It was also terrifying, enough to stop breathing that it did not matter to the cops that the child was eight. It did not seem impossible to believe that they would pull the trigger because they, fully trained cops, felt threatened by a child. There are many more things to point out and it goes without saying that this book is still very relevant today.