The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a really well-written and intelligent book that takes on a difficult issue that speaks directly to the lives of many of our students.

“Young Adult Literature in the College Classroom: Teaching the Novel Feed.' Proposing here, check out the teaching note that I published in Radical Teacher…:

For a look at the success that I’ve had with other YA fare in a classroom like the one I’m That is quite suitable for the teaching of literary analysis, close reading, research methodology, andĪcademic argumentation, if you or your department position these types of scholarly praxis as curriculumĮxpectations. YA Literature provides fun and engaging material In a classroom and in relation to assigned coursework. Remember that alienation = stagnation when it comes to the educational experiences students might have

I hope that you find this work helpful, as well as persuasive, for teaching the novel The Hate U Give, and I greatly welcome any feedback and suggestions. The first page provides some sample low-stakes activities and potential writing prompts whereas, the second hosts a list of outside texts that might be incorporated into a unit on this novel with brief summaries of each piece. I have dedicated two pages to thinking about how students might engage with this novel in generative ways that work to foster the development of political consciousness and, hopefully, a desire to question the status quo and to develop meaningful relationships with the written work that they produce in the course. Thomas’ prose is clear and accessible, and the book’s content begs for further investigation into the politics of Black power, the current development of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the cultural relevance of Hip Hop as a genre of music, a philosophical tradition, and an epistemology. In doing so, the novel pushes back against the mainstream media’s criminalization of Black youth as thugs and super-predators and presents a narrative of community and care in the depiction of a Black working-class neighborhood. The novel unflinchingly confronts systemic racism and police brutality in the United States through the lens of a young Black woman struggling to make sense of it all and, through this process, find her own voice in the face of an oppressive state apparatus. The latter event sets the book’s plot in motion, as Starr must grapple with her friend’s death, a criminal justice system that does not convict murderers who are both white and policemen, a news media bent on portraying her friend as a criminal, and a friend’s death that complicates her ability to negotiate between her dual personas: Garden Heights Starr and Williams (a predominantly white private school) Starr.

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