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Lit Charts/themes

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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in All American Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Racism, Stereotyping, and Police Brutality

All American Boys is centered around an incident of police brutality: Paul Galluzzo's violent arrest of Rashad at Jerry's convenience store. The novel shows how the attack shocks and disturbs the town of Springfield, while also emphasizing that this incident is representative of a broader problem of racist police violence that affects the entire country. Meanwhile, Mrs. Fitzgerald's stories about the civil rights movement indicate that police racism and brutality are not recent...

read analysis of Racism, Stereotyping, and Police Brutality

American Culture, Values, and Patriotism

The title All-American Boys indicates from the outset that the novel is concerned with American culture and values. The novel is set in Springfield, a seemingly average town in an unnamed state in the US. Like the rest of the country, Springfield has become increasingly diverse in recent years; at one point, Quinn mentions Paul telling him that the white population of Springfield has fallen from 85% to 37%. In the midst of these demographic...

read analysis of American Culture, Values, and Patriotism

Both Quinn and Rashad have significant, but troubled, relationships with their fathers, and both suffer under their fathers' expectations for them. Quinn's dad was, by all accounts, an ideal father, dedicated to his family and community. At the same time, he was absent during Quinn's childhood, at first temporarily while he was serving in the military, and then permanently after he was killed in Afghanistan. This is painful on a personal level for Quinn, and...

read analysis of Fathers and Sons

Maturity, Discipline, and Responsibility

In many ways, All-American Boys is a book about the challenges faced by teenagers who are emerging from the innocence of childhood and must learn to face the harsh realities of the adult world with maturity and responsibility. As teenage boys go, both Quinn and Rashad are already fairly responsible, due to the fact that they both face rather significant challenges-Rashad as a young black man, and Quinn as the child of a single parent...

read analysis of Maturity, Discipline, and Responsibility

Many people in Springfield have a rather simplistic understanding of what it means to be a hero versus a villain, but the novel challenges this simplistic view, suggesting that such an easy division is not always possible. Several characters are framed as heroes, most notably Quinn's father (who is nicknamed "Saint Springfield") and Paul Galluzzo. Rashad's father David is also something of a hero figure, in that he is presented as a model...

read analysis of Heroes vs. Villains

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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in All American Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Racism, Stereotyping, and Police Brutality All American Boys is centered around an incident of police brutality: Paul Galluzzo's violent arrest of Rashad at Jerry's convenience store.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Brief Biography of Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She began writing The Hate U Give as a senior project while studying creative writing at Belhaven University, a predominantly white college in her hometown. Thomas has stated that her work initially focused on fantasy, but, following the encouragement of a professor, she decided to draw more heavily from her experience as a black woman in the southern United States. She also decided to focus specifically on a female protagonist in her debut novel, feeling that black girls' experiences were too often overlooked by mainstream media and activism. In 2016, the as-of-yet unpublished Thomas won an inaugural grant from the nonprofit We Need Diverse books. Upon publication in 2017, The Hate U Give became an immediate bestseller and won numerous accolades, including the Coretta Scott King Award. Thomas is a lover of hip hop briefly performed as a rapper as a teen. She has stated that she is deeply influenced by the work of Tupac Shakur, whose definition of the phrase "Thug Life" grants the novel its title.

Historical Context of The Hate U Give

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.

Other Books Related to The Hate U Give

Thomas's novel is one of many recent works inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Jay Coles' Tyler Johnson Was Here, Kekla Magoon's How It Went Down, and Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds' All American Boys are similarly geared toward young adult readers and tackle issues of racism and police violence against black communities. Ta Nahisi Coates' bestselling nonfiction work Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. Thomas' novel repeatedly also references the words of "Brother Malcom"-i.e. activist Malcom X, whose Between the World and Me focuses on the realities of being a young black man in America, while journalist and professor Marc Lamont Hill explores the historical context of state-sanctioned violence in The Hate U Give also touches on the theme of double consciousness, a concept put forth by scholar W. E. B. Du Bois in The Soul of Black Folk, and which describes the sensation felt by black individuals upon seeing themselves through the lens of a racist society. Finally, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is considered a pivotal work of the Civil Rights Movement. The Hate U Give makes repeated references to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series; not only are Starr, Khalil, Natasha, and Seven fans of the books, but Maverick also compares the Hogwarts houses to gangs.

Key Facts about The Hate U Give

Full Title: The Hate U Give

When Written: 2017

Where Written: Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.

When Published: February 28, 2017

Literary Period: Contemporary

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

Setting: The lower-class, predominantly black neighborhood of Garden Heights and the upper-crust world of Williamson Prep.

Climax: Starr and her neighbors embrace the power of their voices to create change; Starr defends Khalil's life at the protests following the indictment verdict, while Garden Heights residents tell police that King set fire to Maverick's store.

Antagonist: One-Fifteen, King

Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for The Hate U Give

Personal Experience. Like the protagonist of her novel, Angie Thomas witnessed a shootout as a child in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi.

Historical Connections. Thomas grew up close to civil rights activist Medgar Evers' home, and says her mother heard the gunshot that killed him.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides. Angie Thomas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She began writing The Hate U Give as a senior project while studying creative writing at Belhaven University, a predominantly white college in her hometown.

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The Making of Asian Diasporas, 1850-1930 (Chapter 2) - Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia

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noun 3. The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland; 4. People who have spread or been dispersed from their homeland DERIVATES: adj. Oxford English Dictionary Long used exclusively in relation to the Jewish Diaspora (and later encompassing the African experience of slavery), the term 'diaspora' has undergone a significant expansion in its usage and definition.

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Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of many award-winning books, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks and more.

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Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, GA, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the US to write full-time.

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Understanding the History Behind Modern Racial Profiling

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Teen Homelessness Statistics Covenant House and the Covenant House Institute strive to be knowledge leaders in the field of homeless youth services by sharing what we have learned over our more than 40 years of experience. We share statistics on homeless youth in America in hopes to inform other se…

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The Hate U Give: The Powerful Message Behind The Best-Selling Novel And New Film | NBC Nightly News

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Movie Director's struggles with the language

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Movie Director's struggles with the language

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The Carpetbagger

Amandla Stenberg as a newly galvanized Starr Carter in "The Hate U Give." Credit... Erika Doss/20th Century Fox

How do you make a movie about teenagers when the more authentic it sounds, the less likely it is that young people will be able to see it?

That was the dilemma facing George Tillman Jr., who directed "The Hate U Give." Based on the best-selling young-adult novel by Angie Thomas, the film follows Starr Carter ( Amandla Stenberg), a black student at a largely white prep school, who is galvanized into activism after she witnesses the police shooting of her childhood friend Khalil.

"The Hate U Give" takes its title and central philosophy from a concept espoused by Tupac Shakur: To the rapper, who had "THUG LIFE" tattooed in capital letters on his torso, that phrase was an acronym for a vicious cycle of societal violence. "THUG LIFE," he explained, actually stands for "The Hate U Give Little Infants Effs Everybody."

[ Read our movie review of "The Hate U Give."]

Of course, Shakur used a stronger word than "eff" - one that Thomas was able to print several times in her book but that Tillman could use only sparingly onscreen, lest he incur an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for strong language. (The Times has a similar restriction on the expletive, which your Carpetbagger has been known to utter from time to time.) If "The Hate U Give" featured more than one use of that word, the movie would be in jeopardy of losing the PG-13 rating that Tillman and his distributor, 20th Century Fox, had hoped to earn, and teenagers who treasured the book might be barred from seeing the adaptation.

Stenberg and her director, George Tillman Jr., on the "Hate U Give" set. Credit... Erika Doss/20th Century Fox

"Young kids today are very smart," Tillman said. "They watch adult films, they get things very quickly, and they're very sophisticated." But that posed its own problem: If Tillman tried to sanitize the language, his target audience would know. And given that two crucial scenes in "The Hate U Give" require Shakur's "THUG LIFE" concept to be explained in full, there were no easy write-arounds.

"I felt like if I didn't say what Tupac was trying to say, it would not feel authentic," the director said. A different, less penalized expletive wouldn't work either: "The audience that was familiar with Tupac and his philosophy would think, 'Oh, they're just trying to make it mainstream,'" Tillman said.

[ Amandla Stenberg, George Tillman Jr. and Angie Thomas recall the microaggressions they experienced in school.]

Another filmmaker, Bo Burnham, faced a similar dilemma this year with his movie "Eighth Grade." The M.P.A.A. slapped the junior-high dramedy with an R rating for strong language, though its curse words would hardly scandalize teenagers. Burnham refused to cut his film for a wider audience: "I just wanted to portray the way kids' lives are," he told Variety in July. "I would love kids to be living in a PG-13 world. They just aren't."

For Tillman, whose previous films like "Soul Food" and "Men of Honor" have been mostly rated R, reaching a general audience was paramount. "If we're following this young girl's point of view, I just felt like it really made it more universal to walk that line and make it for anyone under 13," he said. "As a filmmaker, you really want to be organic, but you also want people to see the film as much as possible."

To make it work, then, Tillman strategized. In one early scene, Starr's father (Russell Hornsby) was supposed to use the expletive; Tillman changed it to "eff," reasoning that a father might want to soften his language around his daughter. Tillman wanted to save his single usage of the full-blown word for a different first-act scene, in which Starr listens to Shakur as Khalil explains the rapper's message. "If Khalil was saying 'eff' or bouncing around that word," Tillman said, "it just wouldn't have been authentic."

Still, that scene with Khalil was meant to be mirrored later in the film, when a newly self-actualized Starr is the one who must explain Shakur's intent to others. Since Starr had spent the bulk of "The Hate U Give" finding her voice, how would it look for her to lose it at this pivotal moment?

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'The Hate U Give' | Anatomy of a Scene

George Tillman Jr. narrates a sequence from his film where Maverick, played by Russell Hornsby, teaches his children how to behave around the police.

"My name is George Tillman Jr., and I am the director of "The Hate U Give." We always called this scene "the talk." The scene was actually in the middle of the book, but we decided very early on to move it at the top of the film. What I love about this scene is, outside, you see a normal neighborhood, with a lot of playing. It feels like a Saturday afternoon. But I cinematically wanted to move slowly towards this house, to really show that, while everyone is having a good time playing, there's important business being done with the Carter family. The first guy we see is Mav Carter. You see a guy who got braids, and he got a tattoo, so your assumption is that this guy is a gang member and he's up to no good. But as the scene sort of progressed, I love turning the scene on its head and seeing that he's not who you think he is." "Now, one day, you're all going to be with me, and you best bet we gonna get pulled over." He's a guy who's a father, a husband, and he's talking about something that's a very serious issue, that he's telling them to put their hands on the table. "You're going to see me with my hands like this." What I love about this scene is that this feels like a normal conversation like somebody would have about the birds and the bees with their children. But this is a scene that's very normal in a lot of African-American families across the country, which is, how you keep your kids safe. How do you get them to understand how to act around police officers? It's all about a father protecting his family. "It can get real dangerous, so don't argue with them. But keep - " The rehearsal for the scene was very important. It started off by rehearsing a scene with Lamar Johnson, who plays Seven, and Amandla Stenberg, who plays Starr. They rehearsed the scene, but they are not actually in the scene, but I only rehearsed it with them so they could have it as a backstory for them, moving forward, for the rest of the film. "Now, just because we got to deal with this mess, don't you ever forget that being black is an honor, because you come from greatness." But the young kids who played the scene in the film, I didn't rehearse with them. I wanted them to be on camera for the first time experiencing that. So what we do - we're seeing three different kinds of dynamics in this scene, is understanding the subtext of what an African-American family go through in the inner city. We're seeing a father figure who is very present in the household. And we're seeing a relationship that shows a loving relationship between a husband and wife. Even though they have disagreements, we still see a love. "You understand?"

George Tillman Jr. narrates a sequence from his film where Maverick, played by Russell Hornsby, teaches his children how to behave around the police. Credit Credit... 20th Century Fox

Tillman shot the climactic scene a number of different ways, but when it came time to submit his cut to the M.P.A.A. for a rating, he used a take with Stenberg saying "eff" instead of the expletive, and only Khalil's earlier use of the full word remained. "Historically, you only get one," Tillman reasoned.

As predicted, the M.P.A.A. granted "The Hate U Give" a PG-13 rating, but what Tillman didn't foresee is how miserable that would make him.

After rewatching his movie, "I felt like it was compromised," he said. "Why didn't I just go with my instinct from the beginning and not worry about it? I didn't give them the second F-word because I didn't think I would get it, and I never got it before. But something in my heart was telling me it wasn't authentic to what we were trying to say."

And so, with the release date fast approaching, Tillman persuaded Fox to do something nearly unprecedented: resubmit "The Hate U Give" to the M.P.A.A. with an unbowdlerized version of Starr's big moment. Tillman would write the ratings board a letter pleading for the added expletive, which he argued was essential to the film and his lead character's journey.

Surprisingly, the M.P.A.A. granted his request: "The Hate U Give" would be the rare PG-13 film to contain two instances of the board's most penalized curse word.

"Sometimes the M.P.A.A. gets a tough rap about ratings, but here's a chance where it really worked to our benefit," Tillman said. "They knew that the language was not just used as language, it was used to educate and inform."

Ultimately, Starr learns over the course of the movie to put a premium on keeping it real, and the language in "The Hate U Give" had to follow suit. In other words, if the film wanted to walk the walk when it came to teenage verisimilitude, it also had to talk the talk.

"I felt like it wouldn't be truth without it," Tillman said.

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With One Strong Word, 'The Hate U Give' Couldn't Hold Its Tongue (Published 2018)

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The Carpetbagger How do you make a movie about teenagers when the more authentic it sounds, the less likely it is that young people will be able to see it? That was the dilemma facing George Tillman Jr., who directed "The Hate U Give."

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