The Hate U Give

By -
I wanted to talk a little bit about Emmet Till today in my blog post. Emmet Till was used in The Hate U Give frequently as a symbol of The Civil Rights Movement and even a symbol for Khalil. Most of you probably have heard about Emmet Till but I would guess that many of you don't. Some of us are unaware about him and other black victims because this is a conversation which is not held enough. People do not want to talk about Emmet Till or police brutality because it make us uncomfortable. It says something that these conversations make us uncomfortable. I want us to be uncomfortable. I want us to be uncomfortable about a society that often and systematically projects hate. We can not make changes while we are comfortable.

Emmet Till was a fourteen year old African American boy that grew up in Detroit, Michigan and was born in Chicago in 1941. After an interaction with a woman named Carolyn Bryant the boy was taken out of his house by the woman's fiancé and his friend. They lynched him and then shot him. The body was found three days after the incident alongside a river.

The two men were found not guilty of any charges by an all white jury. After statute of limitations and double jeopardy was up there were two confessions. The men confessed to killing Till and Carolyn Bryant confessed to fabricating most of the incident.

These men walked free just as one fifteen did in the book. Things like this still happen in our country. Too many black lives are unlawfully and unjustifiably taken from the world. Maybe having theses conversations can help open the problem up to more and more people and will help us come closer to a solution for this terrible problem.

Comments

  1. Eva YoussefNovember 11, 2019 at 9:07 PM

    Griffin, I am so grateful you opened this conversation up. I didn't know about Emmet Till's story before now and that is very unfortunate. It is not okay that he is just one of many that share the same fate as Khalil and other African Americans do at the hands of racism in this country. It's so important that we do not become silent or we will become complacent. I hope we can all have more conversations like this so we can move towards a change that needs to happen in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ally DunlapNovember 12, 2019 at 8:47 AM

    Griffin, this is so well written and you bring up a very good and valid point. These conversations need to be had for there to be a change. If you were to teach this book to your future class, would you give them history lessons on people like Emmet Till while reading or would you do it before or after the novel is read?

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownNovember 12, 2019 at 9:43 AM

    I think that it is important to know stories like these to better understand not only the book but the world around us. Emmet Till's story also came up in my Southern Lit class. Do you think that YA readers will have a better understanding of Black Lives Matter and movements like it after reading The Hate U Give? I personally respected the movement but was always indifferent about BLM thinking that people obviously felt strongly about it but I didn't have a deeper understanding about it until we listened to the TED talk speaker and even more so understand all the encompasses it because of this book and class discussions.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm
Read more

Speak and the Symbolism of Nature

By Anonymous -
   Laurie Halse Anderson's,  Speak , dives into the murky, muddy waters of adolescent rape culture. When the book was published in 1999, rape was not a comfortable topic to discuss with adults, let alone teenagers. Anderson writes about Melinda Sordino and her freshman high school experience which is turning out to be rather negative. Soriano stands as a thriving young role model for struggling teenage girls all over the world. Although she isn't an outstanding student or have plenty of friends to juggle, through Melinda, other young women can see that it's completely normal and okay to struggle in high school not only academically, but socially and emotionally. One of my favorite parts of the novel isn't a super obvious quality. Throughout the novel, Melinda's attitude changes and grows with the coming of spring and through nature and art, she learns to move past her troubling end of summer experience and once again find the importance of her voice.    Melinda st
Read more