The 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas banned in many schools for its language and themes is The Hate U Give.
Thomas’s debut novel follows Starr Carter, a Black teenager who witnesses her childhood friend Khalil being shot by a police officer. Its central subjects include racism, police violence, code-switching, activism, family, and the Black Lives Matter movement. The title comes from a Tupac Shakur idea about how social conditions affect children and eventually harm the wider community.
The novel was published by Balzer + Bray in February 2017 and debuted at number one on The New York Times young adult bestseller list. It became one of the American Library Association’s most-challenged books in multiple years. Complaints cited profanity, sexual references, drug use, and what some objectors described as an anti-police message.
A common mix-up is confusing the novel with its 2018 film adaptation, starring Amandla Stenberg. Angie Thomas later published On the Come Up, another young adult novel set in the same fictional Garden Heights community, but it is not the book identified here.