Thomas’s novel invokes the language of the modern protest movement Black Lives Matter, which grew in response to real-world incidents of police brutality. Thomas has stated that she was specifically inspired by Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man whose 2009 killing at the hands of a white police officer serves as the plot of the film Fruitvale Station. In Thomas’s novel, Starr says that she “can’t breathe” following Khalil’s shooting, directly invoking the death of Eric Garner; Garner was an unarmed black man killed after being put in a chokehold by a police officer, and his last words, “I can’t breathe”, subsequently became a rallying cry in protests across the country. The fact that officials “leave Khalil’s body in the street like it’s an exhibit” also echoes the treatment of Michael Brown, a black teen shot and killed by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014; Brown’s body was infamously left in the street for four hours by authorities. The final page of The Hate U Give includes a list of black individuals whose deaths at the hands of the police echo Khalil’s, such as Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, and Philando Castile. These names, among many others, continue to spur protests against racial injustice throughout the United States. Thomas’s novel also draws upon the historical legacy of the Civil Rights movement. On her blog Starr posts a photograph of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old black child lynched in 1955 after allegedly whistling at a white woman. Maverick makes his children memorize teachings from the Black Panthers, a political party founded in the 1960s to defend minority communities from police violence, and he has a photograph in his store of party co-founder Huey Newton.
Ross, Julianne. "The Hate U Give." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 30 Apr 2018. Web. 18 Sep 2024.