Growing up in Jackson, Mississipi, Angie Thomas‘ childhood would shock anyone who’s led even a remotely sheltered life.
“I remember being at the neighbourhood park as a kid and some drug dealers got into a shootout as us kids were on the playground. None of us were hurt thankfully, but that was part of my neighbourhood, that was part of life in my neighbourhood, unfortunately,” Thomas tells PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Author of the wildly successful YA novel The Hate U Give and the recently released On The Come Up, Thomas continues to use her real-life experiences growing up to craft novels that shed light on heavy, relevant issues in a way that invites readers to see the world through the eyes of an African-American growing up in what continues to be a racially volatile society.
The Hate U Give follows a young African-American girl named Starr who witnesses police shoot and subsequently kill her unarmed best friend, and Starr must decide whether testifying would be worth the very real threat to her and her family’s own life.
Set in the same neighbourhood as The Hate U Give but “not a sequel or a spinoff“, follow-up On The Come Up is about a 16-year-old aspiring rapper named Bri whose life is thrown into chaos when her mum dies and a song she makes goes viral for the wrong reasons.
Weaving her personal life into her works of fiction has proved effective for Thomas, who says that after the release of The Hate U Give, she received an email from a woman whose parents were white supremacists.
“Her father was a leader of a Ku Klux Klan group in Alabama and she grew up hearing the N-word regularly in her house and she grew up being told that black people were inferior to her,” Angie explains.
“…Someone told her to read my book and she was glad that she did because it helped her see things in an entirely different light. It helped her understand why we say ‘Black Lives Matter‘, it even humanised black people for her more than they’ve ever been.
“So that was powerful to me. That’s one of those stories that I’ll always remember and it just showed me how powerful bigotry can be.”
There’s no denying bigotry is as powerful as it is vile, but the fact that a book can change someone’s entire perspective – especially someone who was raised by bigotry incarnated – is proof that, at least in some instances, literature can be even more powerful.
While The Hate U Give was met with some resistance from a particular police union and a handful of schools, its reception has been overwhelmingly positive, critically acclaimed and has already been adopted as a learning tool by teachers and police officers alike since its release back in 2017.
“I know of police forces who have bought copies for every single officer on their force so they can better understand racial bias and the things that they sometimes do themselves against black people so they can hopefully improve.
“So, I wish they [those who protested the book] would’ve actually maybe taken the time to read it instead of just jumping to conclusions. It’s kind of like they say, ‘When you assume, you make the ass out of you and me.’”
The Hate U Give was eventually made into a movie starring The Hunger Games‘ Amandla Stenberg and Riverdale‘s KJ Apa, which was released in Australia at the beginning of the year, and Thomas was invited on set for four weeks as an advisor. While bonds were formed with the entire cast, Thomas was admittedly rattled by KJ Apa’s New Zealand accent.
“It’s always interesting to hear when he speaks his normal accent and then you hear him using an American accent because he does it so well and it always threw me off. I was like, ‘Wait, you’re not American, I have to remember that,’” she chuckles.
“He’s a sweet guy, I’m so happy we got him on board with the project.”
Thomas and the production crew worked incredibly hard to ensure the book was faithfully adapted into a film, which is evident when you’ve seen and read them both, and Thomas ensured her love for Harry Potter was evident in both the book and the film and the characters reference the J.K. Rowling novels on multiple occasions.
“I grew up on Harry Potter. Harry Potter distracted me from the gunshots I heard at night, honestly. If I got caught up in the Harry adventures I could ignore all of that, so I’m so thankful to those books for that,” Thomas insists, proving the power of the book once again.
“I’m a huge Harry Potter-head and I was told someone showed J.K. Rowling the section from the book where Maverick compares the Hogwarts houses to gangs and she thought it was the funniest thing, so I feel very validated,” she laughs.
The Hate U Give and On The Come Up are on shelves and sites worldwide now.
