65 pages • 2 hours read
Angie ThomasThe Hate U Give
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Five Weeks After It”
Chapter 16 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of racism and violence.
April Ofrah secures Starr an interview with a local news station. The whole family accompanies her to the station. There, a producer calls Starr brave, but she doesn’t feel like it. Her interviewer is Diane Carey, a local reporter whose broadcasts Starr has watched with her grandmother for years. After recording some B-roll footage of them walking around, Diane and Starr sit down. She asks Starr who Khalil was to her. Starr says that he was just a kid and explains why he started selling drugs. Even though she knows that King will watch the segment, Starr tells Diane that Khalil sold drugs to pay back the biggest drug dealer in the neighborhood. She doesn’t name King, concluding that “it’s dry snitching, but it’s still snitching” (288).
Starr tells Diane that the media portrayal of Khalil annoys her because it’s as if news reporters have charged Khalil with his own murder. She explains that he opened the car door to ask if she was ok when Officer 115 shot him. She also says that the officer pointed his gun at her, which no one but Carlos knew before now.
She says while she isn’t afraid of the cops, she wishes that they wouldn’t make so many assumptions about Black people. Officer 115’s assumption that she and Khalil were up to no good led to Khalil’s murder. When Diane asks what Starr would say to Officer 115 if he were there, she replies, “I’d ask him if he wished he shot me too” (290).
Chapter 17 Summary
When the interview airs, it is one of the most-watched segments in the network’s history. Starr even hears that an anonymous millionaire wants to pay her college tuition after seeing it. Kenya texts Starr her grudging approval but adds that King is angry about the dry snitching.
On Saturday, on the way to the prom, Chris is moody and distant. Once they arrive, he goes off to talk to someone while Starr meets up with Maya. Neither girl is on speaking terms with Hailey, though Maya confronted her about the cat question. Hailey told her to get over it because it was a joke. Starr and Maya dance together without either of their boyfriends. Hailey comes in with her date but avoids them.
Finally, Chris comes over to ask Starr if she wants a picture. Annoyed with his behavior, she says no and asks why it feels like he doesn’t want to be there. When he doesn’t answer, Starr storms out to sit in their car. Chris follows and says he’s angry she didn’t tell him about being the witness to the shooting. He recognized her in the interview, even though they blurred her face and distorted the sound. Starr resents that he is upset because she didn’t tell him about one of the worst nights of her life. She tells him that she has now seen two people die, a revelation she never shared with Chris. He believes that she doesn’t trust him enough to tell him these things. Starr admits that this is true—she didn’t trust that he would not see her as “ghetto” if he knew everything. He asks her to let him in, emotionally.
Starr cries and tells him about Natasha’s death and how her family used to live in a one-bedroom apartment in the projects. All the details come out about how terrible the conditions were because her father couldn’t get a job because he was an ex-con. She then talks about Khalil, who gave her her first kiss, and whose mother was addicted to crack cocaine and made bad decisions that more or less forced him into dealing drugs. Starr blames herself for not being there for Khalil. She tells Chris that he was her “normal” through everything, which is another reason she didn’t tell him everything. He holds her while she cries. When she finishes, they kiss, and Chris tells her that he loves her.
Chapter 18 Summary
On Sunday, the family visits their new house in a nice neighborhood. Lisa got the new job at Markham, allowing them to afford this new home. Their parents tell them that they will move once summer break starts at school. Starr then reveals that Seven does not plan to go away to college. This upsets Mav, who doesn’t want Seven to miss opportunities.
They go home and watch a basketball game between Cleveland and Chicago. In the second quarter, gunshots ring out. They all get to the floor and hear tires squeal. The assailants shot through the front window and also threw a brick. They call Carlos while the neighbors check in to make sure everything is ok. Carlos arrives and finds that Mav called the Cedar Grove King Lords, who are in a feud with the local King Lords. They agree to guard the house.
While everyone suspects that King is responsible for the attempt to intimidate Starr against testifying, they admit that the police could also be responsible. Starr tries to tell everyone that testifying isn’t worth it. However, Mav convinces her that she should, citing Malcolm X and Black Panthers quotes. Angry that Mav enlisted gang members to protect the house, Carlos storms out.
Chapter 19 Summary
The next morning, the Cedar Grove King Lords accompany the family to the courthouse. Starr remembers going there for Mav’s trial when she was little. Outside, protestors kneel on the courthouse lawn with signs about Khalil and the shooting.
Inside, Lisa tells Starr that she is brave, which Starr refutes. In response, Lisa tells her that “brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared […] it means you go on even though you’re scared” (331). Starr is led into the grand jury room and seated at a table with a microphone that records her voice but doesn’t amplify sound. She tells the grand jury the same story she already told several times. This time, she feels the weight of the responsibility on her shoulders and rises to the challenge. She straightens up and speaks.
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
In this section, Starr works on Building Community-Wide Resistance to Injustice by giving a televised interview about the injustices that she and the Black community experience and calling out the racism that led to Officer 115’s choice to shoot and kill Khalil. In the same interview, she speaks out indirectly against the gang system in Garden Heights, alluding to King as another major source of injustice in Khalil’s life. As a result, both King and the police turn against her, making Starr feel unsafe and almost preventing her from testifying. However, her commitment to justice for Khalil ultimately prevails. These chapters therefore emphasize Starr’s decision to embrace her responsibility to fight for racial justice, and the dramatic internal shifts in her worldview take center stage in this section of the novel.
Amid Starr’s struggles to fight against systemic racism, she must also continue to navigate the complexities of code-switching between her life in Garden Heights and her life at Williamson, and as the controversy around Khalil’s death grows, she becomes increasingly aware of the disconnect between her own experiences and those of her white peers. In this context, Chris and Hailey continue to serve as philosophical foils for one another, for while Hailey persists in perpetuating racist ideas and makes no apologies for her behavior, Chris—despite his flaws and the blind spots of his privileged upbringing—makes an effort to understand Starr’s perspective and support her in the aftermath of her experience with Officer 115. While their emotional conversation indicates that even on a personal level, there are still a variety of inequalities to overcome, their commitment to each other bodes well for the future and reflects a unique angle on the issue of Building Community-Wide Resistance to Injustice.
Starr’s journey with Chris as a white advocate also continues in this section with their disagreement following his realization that she was the witness to Khalil’s murder. Chris is upset that he wasn’t told while Starr is upset that he expects her to tell him these things. However, Chris wants to understand her experience—her whole true experience—and Starr realizes that he cannot know if she doesn’t open up to him. Again, this scene emphasizes the idea that speaking out is necessary to end discriminatory systems. She does this again by testifying to the grand jury.
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