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NPR's Book of the Day
‘Long Way Down’ and ‘The Hate U Give’ are modern classics about gun violence
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- [00:02]
Andrew Limbong
Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. We're gonna wrap up Back to School Week with a couple books that are relatively new to school reading lists. In a bit, we'll hear from author Angie Thomas talking about her book the Hate youe Give. But first, an interview with Jason Reynolds, talking about his 2017 book Long Way Down. It's a book about loss, revenge, grief and gun violence. And in this interview with NPR's David Green, Reynolds talks about avoiding empty cliches when writing about the perpetrators of gun violence. That's after the break.
- [00:37]
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- [01:25]
David Green
Reynolds has a new novel out this month. It focuses on a moment of decision that occurs in an elevator where a young man is on his way to avenge the killing of his brother. The novel is called Long Way down, and Jason Reynolds came by our studio. I asked him first if he'd read a passage from the book.
- [01:44]
Jason Reynolds
I stuck the cannon in the waistband in the back of my jeans, the handle sticking out like a steel tail. I covered it with my Too big T shirt, the name brand hand me down from Sean. The plan was to wait for Riggs in front of his building. Me and Sean were always over his house before Riggs joined the gang, and since then Sean had been up that way a bunch of times to get Mom's special soap. I figured it would be safest if I went in the morning. If I timed it right, none of his crew would be out yet. No one would ever suspect me. I'd hit his buzzer, get him to come down and open the door. Then I'd pull my shirt over my mouth and nose and do it.
- [02:24]
David Green
So tell me who we're hearing from here. Who is this young man in the elevator?
- [02:28]
Jason Reynolds
This is William Holloman, who goes by Will. He's a young man who unfortunately has just Lost his brother to gun violence the night before this is all happening. And Will is growing up in a community where there are certain rules, there's a code of conduct. And what those rules are is, number one, no crying, number two, no snitching. And number three, always seek revenge. And so he is upholding the rules. And this is rule number three. He's going to find the man who murdered his brother, and his plan is to murder that man. Unfortunately, there are. He has to get on the elevator to go down to the ground floor to do this. And that's where he's met by a few visitors.
- [03:03]
David Green
A few visitors. And I don't want to give too much away because I want people to read the book, obviously, but this elevator trip, it almost takes on a Christmas Carol type feel.
- [03:12]
Jason Reynolds
Absolutely.
- [03:12]
David Green
He's being visited by ghosts of his past.
- [03:16]
Jason Reynolds
Absolutely.
- [03:17]
David Green
Why does that happen? What plays out here?
- [03:19]
Jason Reynolds
What I wanted to do in telling a tale about gun violence is to not create one dimensional characters that fall into, like, cliches. And so I think what we can do with devices like using ghosts of the past is we can create a space where the writer, the author, quote, unquote, me doesn't have to teach a lesson. Instead, it's about us, a community, thinking about those of our family members and our friends who we've already lost to this thing and allow their haunting to be the thing that creates our psyche and our conscious.
- [03:50]
David Green
What is an example of the cliche when it comes to gun violence that you might have fallen into one that.
- [03:57]
Jason Reynolds
Young people who engage in, especially the back and forth, the revenge, that there's a fearlessness, that these young people are sort of without feelings, without emotions, that they're cold as ice. The truth is, is that everyone who's ever been around, anyone who has been in these environments knows that the people who pull the triggers are terrified.
- [04:16]
David Green
For young people who decide ultimately to pull the trigger, does the fact that they were afraid and fearful, does it ever justify the pulling of that trigger or excuse it? Maybe Excuse? Is it better? Does it ever excuse the pulling of that trigger?
- [04:29]
Jason Reynolds
I don't know if I would say it excuses it because I think that a life loss is a life loss and gun violence is gun violence. But I will say that, like there are reasons there are circumstances that lead to these moments and that lead to the behavior and the mindset of young people in particular environments. And that we on the outside, people who are the voyeurs of these experiences, the people on the outside of the fishbowl, have to Be very careful about passing judgment and should extend some grace and should try to figure out how to better humanize the people involved.
- [05:01]
David Green
I wonder if you could take me to you as a 19 year old living just outside Washington D.C. because this story is very personal to you, right?
- [05:09]
Jason Reynolds
Absolutely. I mean, I was 19, you know, I got a phone call at 2:00 in the morning from one of my best friends who informed me that another one of our best friends was murdered. And he was. You know, I think about my friend all the time and he was one of the greatest guys. And you hear that all the time. But the truth is that for us, he really was. And so the news hit like a Mack truck. And then I'll never forget the next day being at his mom's house, overrun with anger and having to admit to myself that in that moment I was fully aware that we could all leave that house, go and search for whoever we think may have done this and end their lives. And that I would have been able to go home that night and sleep like a baby. Because what happens is when you feel that kind of pain, time suspends itself. And you believe that you'll be 19 forever. You believe that the way you feel in this moment will last forever. And I remember his mother standing in front of us and telling us that no other mother needs to feel what she feels in that moment. And because of respect for her, all of us sort of standing down. Of course, moments later, or a month later, I'm grateful that we didn't do the thing that we thought we were going to do. Right now when you start to sort of work through those things and you come back to reality, time reanimates and you're like, whoa, my entire life could have changed.
- [06:26]
David Green
You decided to write this book in the form of poetry. Why did you decide to go to go that route?
- [06:33]
Jason Reynolds
I need. I need my young brothers who are living in these environments. I need the kids who are not living in these environments to have no excuses not to read the book. The truth of the matter is that I recognize that I write prose and I love prose and I want everybody to read prose. But I'm also not. I would never sort of deny the fact that, like, literacy in America is not the highest, especially amongst young men, especially amongst young men of color. It's something that we've all been working very hard on. And my job is not to sort of critique or judge that. My job is to do something to help that. And to know you can Finish this in 45 minutes means the world to me so that we can get more young people reading it and thinking right and having discussion about what this book is actually about.
- [07:14]
David Green
Yeah, you're right. You open the pages and you immediately see, I mean just a few verses on each page. And it does feel like this is not intimidating. This is not an hours long commitment.
- [07:22]
Jason Reynolds
Nope. You know, we talk all the time about how do bookshow can books compete with all the other distractions and, you know, stimuli that exist for young people today. The truth is is that the best thing we could do is figure out what's working and then translate that to the page. It doesn't mean you have to lose the integrity or the sophistication of your work, but it does mean if you really want to affect change in these young people's lives and they're not reading books, figure out how to make them read them.
- [07:45]
David Green
Can I finish by asking you to read something that really struck us from your website? Is it it feels to me and tell me if I'm wrong, but it feels to me it really sums up who you are as an author and what you're trying to do.
- [07:57]
Jason Reynolds
For sure. For sure. Here's what I know. I know there are a lot, a lot of young people who hate reading. I know that many of these book haters are boys. I know that many of these book hating boys don't actually hate books. They hate boredom. If you are reading this and you happen to be one of these boys, but first of all, you're reading this so my master plan is already working. And second of all, know that I feel you. I really do. Because even though I'm a writer, I hate reading boring books too.
- [08:32]
David Green
Jason Reynolds, thanks for coming in.
- [08:34]
Jason Reynolds
Thank you, man.
- [08:35]
David Green
The book is called Long Way down by the novelist Jason Reynolds.
- [08:44]
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- [09:12]
Andrew Limbong
Angie Thomas book the Hate U Give is similarly about violence and fear. But she tells NPR's Lulu Garcia Navarro that for her, the whole point of writing the book was to encourage kids to help them find the thing that makes their voices heard.
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Angie Thomas
Here's Thomas When I was 12, my parents had two talks with me. One was the usual birds and the bees. The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me.
- [09:37]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
That's Angie Thomas reading in the voice of her narrator, Starr Carter. Early on in her debut novel, mama.
- [09:43]
Angie Thomas
Fussed and told daddy I was too young for that. He argued that I wasn't too young to get arrested or shot. Star, star, you do whatever they tell you to do, he said. Keep your hands visible. Don't make any sudden moves. Only speak when they speak to you.
- [09:56]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
STARR Carter is 16 when she confronts the exact situation her father warned her about. She's in the car with her friend Khalil when he is shot and killed by a cop. The case becomes national news, putting a dichot in Starr's life into even greater relief. She lives in Garden Heights, the gang ravaged neighborhood where her father keeps his store. But she goes to school at Williamson Prep, where she's only one of a handful of black kids. The book is called the Hate U Give. It's a hotly anticipated book. It's gotten rave reviews and it's Angie Thomas's debut novel. She joins us now from Jackson, Mississippi. Welcome to the program.
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Angie Thomas
Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here.
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Interviewer with Angie Thomas
It's a pleasure. Can you describe the two stars we meet in the book?
- [10:42]
Angie Thomas
Well, the two stars I think a lot of young African Americans can relate to because there's this whole thing that we call code switching. At Starr's neighborhood, Starr is known as Big Mav's daughter. Her father was a former gang member and he's turned his life around. But there's also his past that sometimes is brought up. But there's Williamson Starr, who does not speak about where she's from. And it comes from a small place of shame, but it's also a place of trying to fit in because she's in a school where it's mostly white and it's mostly upper class. She has classmates who are driving Benzes, whereas she's dropped off every morning. So she has to try to figure out who she is, where she is. And once this unfortunate event happens in her life, the struggle becomes even harder.
- [11:30]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
You talk about how code switching is something that African Americans have to do a lot. Is it something you have experience with?
- [11:36]
Angie Thomas
I absolutely have experience with it. I went to a mostly white upper class private college here in Jackson, but I was from a neighborhood that is known for all of the wrong reasons and for lack of better words, we will call it the hood. So I knew I had to fight against a stereotype of being a Ghetto girl. And I had to fight even harder to show that I was intelligent and that I was capable of being there, just like my counterparts.
- [12:02]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
You just mentioned that you went to a mostly white college similar to Starr, your main character. Is that the model? Did you use your experiences in informing how she is presented in the book?
- [12:15]
Angie Thomas
Absolutely. At the time when I was in college, Oscar Grant had just lost his life in Oakland, California. He was an unarmed young black male who had a record. And at the time when his death was making headlines, more people were talking about what he had done in his past than the fact that he unjustly lost his life. And at my school, I heard a different conversation than I may have heard in my neighborhood about Oscar. At school, he may have deserved it. At school, he was in the wrong, but at home, he was one of our own. And we knew Oscar. We saw Oscar every single day. And the only thing I knew how to do at the time was write. So I actually wrote the short story that would later become the Hate U Give while I was a senior in college.
- [12:56]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
So the central catalyst of the novel is the death of Starr's old, dear friend Khalil. Is that modeled on Oscar?
- [13:04]
Angie Thomas
A little bit, yes. And honestly, there was inspiration from a lot of these cases that we see with unarmed black people losing their lives. Michael Brown, when he lost his life, there was more focus on what he had done sometimes than what was done to him. And I looked at Khalil because I know Khalil's. I see Khalil's every single day. I grew up with Khalils who have made decisions that may not be the best. But at the time when Khalil is in his last moments of his life, his past should not have an effect on what happens to him in that moment. So Khalil is a combination of a lot of what we see with young black men, particularly when they lose their lives.
- [13:48]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
She gets a lot of support throughout the book. Your character Star, there's a lot of people helping her on her journey. At the end, she kind of leans towards activism. Do you want that to be something that your young readers take away from from this?
- [14:04]
Angie Thomas
Well, I do. And I also want them to realize and understand that activism has different forms. We're seeing young people find their own voices and find their activism. We're seeing, like Marley Diaz, for example, who is doing 1,000 black girls books Drive. We're seeing that that's a form of activism. And I think with Starr, she does find her voice through a certain form of activism. But that's because of the situation she was in. But I hope that it helps reader helps readers understand, excuse me, that they can find their voices as well and that their voices matter. I think that's the big takeaway from the book is that Starr realizes her voice matters.
- [14:47]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
The title of the novel is taken from Tupac Shakur. Was he an influence on you and your writing? And tell us about the title of the book.
- [14:56]
Angie Thomas
Absolutely. I often say that I want to write like Tupac rapped. I could listen to his album and within a few minutes I could go from thinking deeply to laughing to crying, to partying. And that's what I want to do as a writer. I want to make you think at times, I want to make you laugh at times, I want to make you cry at times. So he was influenced in that way. But also the title itself comes from the tattoo that he had across his abdomen that so many people know him for, that Thug Life tattoo. And what people don't realize is that it actually stood for the hate you give little infants Fs everybody. And he explained that as meaning that what society feeds into, youth has a way of coming back and affecting us all. And in the novel, we see that in the form of riots and we see that in the form of anger and frustration. Even we see it in Starr and how she feels after seeing this unfortunate tragedy take place. I couldn't get the whole Thug Life in there, but it would have been a long title. But that really got to the core of what I was trying to say and do in the book.
- [16:06]
Interviewer with Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas new novel is called the Hate U Give. Thanks. It was great to talk to you, really.
- [16:13]
Angie Thomas
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [16:16]
Andrew Limbong
That's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think. You can write to us@bookofthedaypr.org I'm Andrew Limbong. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Maher. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer. Thanks for listening.
- [16:44]
Jason Reynolds
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- [16:55]
David Green
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- [16:56]
Jason Reynolds
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- [17:02]
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