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'THUG'

The YA Book Everyone Should Be Reading

By Emily JewellPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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After reading multitudes of novels, I never enjoyed contemporary or romance as it is continuously repetitive. When my book club chose The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas as the book of the month, I was disappointed. It did not seem interesting to me in the slightest.

I decided to give it a shot, and by the end of the first chapter I was in tears and my heart was breaking. As a White girl living in an extremely rural town, the only oppression I have ever faced was several misogynistic men in my community whom I avoid.

When the Black Lives Matter movement began and grew popular, I can openly admit that I avoided it. It didn’t involve me and I was comfortable avoiding other people’s issues in my small Jesus-filled farm town. The Hate U Give opened my eyes to something I had never realized.

THUG is about Starr, a young Black girl who teeters back and forth between two lives: her poor “ghetto” neighborhood and her fancy prep school. The balance between the two is shattered whenever she witnesses one of her best friends killed at the hands of a police officer. Some call him a thug and drug dealer, others protest in his name, but Starr is the only one that knows what actually happened that night. But whatever Starr releases could change her life completely, or endanger it.

This novel brought to me the realization that I could not avoid topics like these because they were my problem. This is not a problem exclusive to African-Americans, this is an issue everyone is involved with, because we are human. Our greatest quality is compassion, and somehow we have managed to forget that.

As I followed Starr throughout this novel, it occurred to me how unbelievably lucky I am. I have my fair amount of troubles in my community for being a woman, but I am White above all else, and because of that I am not looked at differently. When I was in high school and a new Black kid enrolled, everyone talked about them, because it was different. It was something that we were not. I was never subjected to that extent of criticism simply because of my skin color.

I urge every person to read this book so you can understand that the oppression that African-Americans face is still alive today, and it is sad. This is something we should all be concerned about and fighting against.

We are human, and nothing more than that. Our souls are the same, and that is what is important.

literature
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About the Creator

Emily Jewell

Just an egg that enjoys writing, tea, and books

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