Yes, that young man may be walking down the street with his pants sagging, but that does not mean he wants your purse he just needs a belt.
Wondering, 'OK, when is something going to happen to change my life? Or when will I get out of this circumstance? Or when will people stop seeing me just as the person who came from a neighborhood like this?' And I think we have to start looking at young people and stop putting them in boxes. "I remember, as a teenager, feeling like I was trapped a lot. On her experience as a teenager and at school Eventually I got to the point where I said, 'You know what? If people can't accept me as I am, I don't need them in my life.' " I had to figure out who I was, where I was. I often tell people I would leave my house playing Tupac, and by the time I got to my school I was playing the Jonas Brothers. "So I had to be two different people in two very different worlds. They are those Christians who say, 'I love Jesus,' but I don't want anyone to have any rights. What I say about my classmates - you may be this person, and if it is, I'm not shading you. But Starr's story and living in those two different worlds is definitely something that I connected with because I went to a mostly white, upper-class private Christian college in conservative Mississippi while living in the 'hood. If I came up here and I was speaking a certain way, you may assume that I'm ignorant just because of that. "I think, to an extent, for a lot of us African-Americans, code switching is often - it feels like a survival tactic. On Starr's code switching, and navigating different worlds So it was actually the frustration and the anger and the pain that led me to write the short story that later became 'The Hate U Give.' "Ī feature film based on the book is in production. "I was inspired because I was in college when that happened, and I was being those two different people in those two different worlds, like Starr," Thomas says of her own experience. The plot is inspired by the real-life police shooting of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, in California. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR) This article is more than 5 years old.Īuthor Angie Thomas ( received critical acclaim for her debut novel, " The Hate U Give." The story follows 16-year-old Starr Carter as she navigates two worlds: the poor black neighborhood where she lives, and her upscale suburban prep school.
Author Angie Thomas talks with WBUR's Robin Young at the First Parish Church in Cambridge.
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