The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give is about a teenager named Starr Carter. She moves between two totally different worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The balance between those two worlds is destroyed when Starr is the witness to the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer while he was unarmed. What everyone wants to know is: what honestly went down that night? And the only person who can answer that is Starr. She struggles to tell people what happened because she and her family's life could be threatened. This book pulled at my heartstrings, it is a book about standing up in the fact of the unfairness of life and yelling for your freedom. It’s about the racism, the abuse, and the punishment some people get while others do not. Although this is a book full of important moments that relate to the present-day state of belittled populations, it is mostly about using your voice. I think this book has the ability to make readers notice just how much their words matter to other people.