Background information

Angie Thomas and her background

Angie Thomas is an African-American writer who grew up in the city of Jackson, Mississippi. Her early life has many parallels to that of the main character in The Hate U Give, Starr Carter. Many of these details come across in the Author’s Note which is included in some versions of the novel. 

Just like Starr, Thomas grew up in a poor neighborhood with a high crime rate. While she did not witness her best friend being killed, she did witness a shoot-out at an early age and she says that the experience had a great impact on her. However, she also noticed many positive things about her neighborhood, with people who helped each other out just like in the fictional Garden Heights.

When Thomas started to write and began to get far in the education system, she also experienced being the only African-American student in some of her classes, among many white students who did not really understand her experience. Just like Starr does in the early parts of the novel, Thomas notes that she did everything she could to avoid standing out or being labelled as “the black girl from the hood” . And just as it happens in the novel, Thomas notes that the differences ...