Hi, I'm Angie Thomas, and I am the author of The Hate U Give,
On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose.
It is so amazing and
almost wild to me that it's been five years since The Hate U Give was released.
Now, looking back over the five years in the time that the book has been out,
I started thinking about, what are five things people probably don't know about
The Hate U Give or about the writing process of The Hate U Give?
So I'm gonna give you five trivia facts that you probably didn't know.
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Well, I always knew the end of The Hate U Give kinda before I knew the beginning.
And I always knew that the last line would be "we'll rebuild".
Well, that was actually going to initially be the last line, "we'll rebuild".
But after that we get a little bit more, but originally,
the last line was going to be "we'll rebuild".
And I wanted that to be the last line and that line stayed with me from
the beginning because when talking about the Black Lives Matter movement.
When talking about protests and riots,
a lot of times at the end you see so much destruction from the anger and
the rage and the heartbreak that a community may be feeling.
And it's hard to see how you can go on from that, but
somehow someway we always rebuild.
And not just with the physical things, I think we emotionally rebuild,
we mentally rebuild.
So for me, those two words,
they were always meant to be towards the end of that book.
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Towards the end of The Hate U Give, there's a scene where Starr, Seven,
Devonte, and Chris get picked up by this guy in the neighborhood named Goon.
And in the back of his truck is a young lady named Bri.
That Bri was initially going to be the Bri that we see as the main character in my
second novel, On the Come Up.
But I decided to change it,
I decided to give my Bri in On the Come Up an aunt instead of an uncle Goon.
So she gets Aunt Pooh instead of Uncle Goon.
So I changed it up.
So technically that was going to be Bri, but it ended up not being Bri.
So just, hey, there are two Brianas in the neighborhood.
I'm sure that's not abnormal, there are two Brianas in the neighborhood.
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I will say most of the main characters, my biggest, most prominent characters,
their names come from something or someone.
Like, for instance, Starr's name comes from this Van Gogh painting Starry Night.
And it came from that because that was one of Tupac's favorite paintings.
And actually Tupac wanted to name his daughter Starr, if he ever had a daughter.
And since I'm such a huge Tupac fan, and because that book was so
inspired by his work and his THUG life, it felt right to name this character
the name that he would have named his daughter if he had one.
Well, then we also have the character of Lisa.
Lisa's name is inspired and comes from one of my other favorite rappers,
Lisa Left Eye Lopes of TLC.
She was a huge influence on me.
And I actually had a personal experience with her as a teenager that
helped save my life.
So I felt the best way to pay homage to her and
to thank her was to name this character after her.
And then you have the character of Maverick.
Maverick's name originally was actually going to be Mac,
which is an all right name, if that's your name, it's a cool name.
But for Maverick I felt like he may have needed something a little different,
maybe a little stronger.
So one day while rereading one of my favorite books,
which is Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, I came across a line in which the main
character Cassie describes her mom as being a "disrupting maverick".
When I read that line, it made me immediately think of Starr's father.
He is a disrupting maverick, so I said, maybe I should just name him Maverick.
It worked out perfectly.
The name Khalil, I knew that the name Khalil meant "friend".
And that felt very fitting,
even though I didn't get to touch on it in the book, they touch on it in the movie.
And I thought they did it in a wonderful way, if you haven't seen the film yet.
But I knew all along that that name meant friend, but I actually got the name from
one of my favorite movies as a kid growing up called Bebe's Kids.
[LAUGH] There's a character in that one named Khalil and
I just liked the name from then, and I decided to put it in in this book.
But I also loved the meaning of it, that it meant friend,
because that's exactly what Khalil is to Starr, a friend.
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I got the name Garden Heights from Tupac again.
And you're probably wondering, how is that?
Well, Tupac wrote a poem called The Rose That Grew From Concrete.
And I absolutely love that poem, and I love all that that poem represents.
And I felt that poem represented the characters I wrote in The Hate U Give.
To me, they're roses growing in concrete.
And when I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about trying to
figure out a name for this neighborhood, I said, well, they're in a concrete garden.
Why not name the neighborhood Garden Heights?
Why not bring that whole thing into it?
And that's why you see all of the street names are named after flowers and
plants and things like that.
Because I felt like it's a garden, but it's a concrete garden.
And you have Starr, you have Seven, you have Iesha, King, Kenya,
all of these different characters who are roses living in this concrete.
Now, because of that I actually got to go back and really pay homage to
that poem with Concrete Rose, by naming the book after that poem.
So I'm so appreciative to Pac and his work and the message he put out there.
And all I wanna do is pay homage to that and hopefully bring his work and
his messaging to the forefront of young people's minds again.
So thank you, Pac, for the inspiration.
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My biggest regret with The Hate U Give is that I did not
address Starr's mental health.
Starr essentially experiences PTSD.
Not just from Khalil's shooting but before that,
from the death of her friend Natasha.
And for years she's really been struggling with PTSD,
she's been struggling with anxiety.
And I regret not addressing that, not calling that what it was, and
not having her get help.
It is okay to say I'm not okay.
In fact, it is important to say I'm not okay.
And it is a wonderful thing to get help.
In fact, as somebody who's in therapy and who addresses her anxiety with
medication and therapy, I'm a huge proponent of therapy of mental health and
for taking care of that part of yourself.
So my biggest regret with The Hate U Give is not addressing that,
especially when we're talking about police brutality and we're talking about racism.
So many people are experiencing PTSD just from seeing videos of shootings and
killings over and over again.
So for a young woman who saw it up close and personal firsthand,
of course, she's dealing with PTSD and it should have been addressed.
So if I ever had the chance to rewrite The Hate U Give,
I would put a whole lot of scenes in there in which we see Starr
sitting down with a therapist and talking this out.
If you're having any troubles, if you're not okay,
it's okay to talk to somebody and seek some help.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Let's erase the stigma.
Thank you all so much for support, for love for the past five years.
And I hope that what I continue to give you in the next five and the next five and
the next five gets just as much love and support from you as well.
Keep being awesome, keep being you.
Take care of yourself, because there's only one you.
Bye.