The Hate U Give tells the story of sixteen-year-old Starr as she guides the reader through her two worlds: her poor neighborhood overrun by thugs and her across-town private school overrun by children of privilege. Starr's two different worlds collide when she witnesses a police officer kill her unarmed life-long friend. This novel gives the reader a personal account of what it's like to be on the inside of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Audience

The recommended audience for this unit is high school juniors. While this text is written at a lower lexile level and could be effectively implemented at lower grades, the novel's complex themes pair well with the study of junior year's emphasis on United States history. Not only because the narrator is a junior in high school, but because this text set supports a cross-curricular examination of how United States' historical race relations affect current treatment of people of color, this text set is specifically recommended for 11th grade students who are at grade level.

Purpose of this text set

This curricular text set is formulated to answer an essential question through the development of the various skills detailed in the applicable Common Core standards. Through independent work, group-work, and self-reflection, students will be able to answer: how has the construction of race in America influenced the treatment of people of color in our society?

Thomas, A. (2017) The hate u give. New York: Harpercollins.