What, kind of, influenced your decision to tell 'The Hate U Give' from this perspective?
Oh, so often when we have discussions
about Black Lives Matter
and so many of these cases, the focus ends up going to young, Black men.
And rightfully so. So often they are the victims.
'Kalil. I'm not playin,' go back to...'
[gun shot]
'What did you do?'
We don't always get to see a young, Black woman
in a detailed perspective.
And so I think, especially in this time when
our voices are the ones that are being most discredited
by our administration, it's so important
to have a testament to who we are and
What was going through your mind the first time you read 'The Hate U Give'?
I think within the first few pages it was very apparent
to me that there was something really special,
of experiences of Black girls,
in a way that was really authentic
and honest. And then, you know, as I read more
and more the story I was just, you know,
I didn't read the book at first. I didn't read the book until after I finished filming.
Just as a young, Black man in America.
I didn't want to give myself too much of his knowledge
or too much of what he had to go through.
I wanted to, kind of, know what I needed to know,
but find the rest of it.
Even when you were still writing 'The Hate U Give,'
you, kind of, had Amandla in mind.
Can you explain, kind of, how that came about?
I was writing the story around the same time
she released that 'Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows' video.
I was so amazed at just
the way she addressed cultural appropriation
in such a phenomenal way at such a young age.
And I remember, after the video went off, I sat there
and I was like,
There's so many different kinds of Black men
in 'The Hate U Give.' Why do you think it's so important to have
those complex representations of Black men?
You know, we don't see ourselves
with that type of diversity, with that dynamic.
Every single male in the book is influenced by a male in my life.
And I wanted to show them themselves.
And I wanted to show the world them. So often, Black men especially
are just left to stereotypes.
What did you do to, kind of, get yourself in the space of that kind of
pain and anxiety?
We've all seen the videos on the internet.
We all understand how pervasive these issues are
and how painful it is for our communities.
And so it really just required me
to reflect in a deeper way about
those feelings and actually confront them
and process them.
As opposed to just moving through them, which is what we always
have to do.
I had a cousin died of gun violence when I was about 12
or 13 years old. He got shot in the head
over something just
completely stupid.
I had to, you know,
use a piece of that.
I've had uncles that have been beaten by police officers.
So I know the familiarity of hearing these stories
and what it's like,
but yeah, that's something I definitely had to tap into myself
and go to that place
and just gather emotions from there.
What is your opinion on the word 'thug'
and how it's used in reference to Black people?
As marginalized people or oppressed groups,
we have the privilege of deciding
what language to use to describe our own oppression.
I think that's something that Tupac
did really beautifully with the acronym 'THUG LIFE,' which means
A lot of people think 'thug' just means
the aggression or
the anger or just the,
you know, the confident bravado that comes
with it. But it's so much more than that.
If you read comments on articles
about Trayvon Martin,
Michael Brown,
Even Tamir Rice,
little thug. And I'm like, it hurt me
and it breaks my heart.
So when Tupac took thug life
and gave it that spin, he wanted people to look at that word
in an entirely different way. He wanted people to look at these so-called
thugs as victims of their circumstances.
That's basically what he was saying.
So often when young, Black men are
killed in situations like this, there's more focus on their mistakes
than on their humanity.
Fact is, if we're going to say Black lives matter, that means