The Hate U Give

Certainly there are challenges of race, social status, death, identity....Starr Carter is a sixteen-year-old African-American living in the mostly poor and black neighborhood of Garden Heights while attending the upscale, largely-white private school Williamson Prep. When she was ten, Starr saw her friend Natasha killed in a drive-by shooting; the trauma of this experience is repeated at the beginning of the novel when Starr witnesses the death of her friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. The novel follows Starr as she attempts to navigate the two worlds of Garden Heights and Williamson Prep while simultaneously dealing with grief over Khalil's death and her forays into activism in response to the unjust shooting.