Book Club Blogcheck out this page for thoughtful opinions, reflections, and analyses from book club participants
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Book Club Blogcheck out this page for thoughtful opinions, reflections, and analyses from book club participants
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By: Arinjay Basak The Hate You Give, written by Angie Thomas, is a fictional novel about the life of Starr Carter, a 16 year old black girl living in the ghetto. Gangs, shootouts, drugs, prostitutes, and violence are all commonplace in the neighborhood, primarily inhabited by black residents. The general area being unsafe, she attends school an hour’s drive away, and is one of the few black students in a school with mainly a very rich, white demographic. The racial and financial contrast with her poor black suburbs leads her to create a front, in which she consciously doesn’t use slang, and carefully sounds out her syllables around her school in an attempt to not stand out in school. One night, leaving a party after hearing gunshots, Starr and her childhood friend Khalil are pulled over by a police officer, and Starr witnesses Khalil unjustly killed by the police brutality she had been warned about from her parents. Most of the kids in the hood were warned how to deal with cops: keep hands visible, don’t make sudden movements, and do what the cop says without talkback. Khalil, making a gesture to see if Starr was alright, moves his hand towards a hairbrush, which the cop mistakes for a gun. The only witness is Starr, but having had one of her close friends shot and killed in front of her once before, the PTSD and emotional stress takes a toll on her, causing her to have breakdowns and cry a lot more. After giving the honest story of how the incident went in an interview with the police, Starr realizes how skewed the media, law, and general public is in terms of finding the truth and justice in these cases. Finding out Khalil was a drug dealer, the media jumps on this, fabricating a story of the cop being afraid, and Khalil being hostile. This dehumanizes Khalil for everyone in the general public and even Starr herself, unable to believe he would take part in dealing something that took his mother away from him. Later, she learns he was forced to deal drugs to pay back the kingpin of a prominent gang to save the addicted mother who did nothing for him. Starr becomes critical of herself, and her white schoolmates who take the media at face value and sympathize with the cop. The Hate You Give is cleverly written so the reader is given a view of both the boonies and the affluent white families, and can see how differently they react to the media. The minorities that are subjected to unjust treatment by higher authorities and the law have been statistically shown to indicate racism from the officers that take part in these incidents. The media has been shown to dehumanize the victims of these cases, tending to go more in depth of how the police officer suffers from the shock of murdering someone in the moment. This happens because the police officer tends to have a stronger voice than the minority. For example, after Starr told her Uncle Carson the cop had his gun trained on Starr after killing Khalil till help came, Carson beat the officer up, which was highlighted in the news more than the fact Khalil was unarmed. The story is written from Starr’s point of view, so it’s bound to be biassed, but ideally this case comes down to 2 voices that should be in court. Here, the police officer fabricated a sob story to win over the media, and Starr didn’t have the opportunity to speak out. Of course, she might have lied about the incident, villainizing the cop to the media, but the voices deserve equal amounts of attention. These violent police brutality cases have a defendant, but need a prosecutor with a voice, or the protests won’t stop, and justice won’t come.
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by Ethan Wang On February 12, 1942, nearly three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive order 9066, which forced citizens with Japanese heritage to be held in incarceration camps, as they were perceived by the government as a threat to national security. The book Displacement by Kiku Hughes provides a view into the experiences of the Japanese American citizens as they lived in those camps by moving the main character from her life in the modern world to a life in an incarceration camp using an unexplained supernatural event. Through this supernatural premise, the author, Kiku Hughes, expresses the dehumanizing and unequal aspects of this executive order, as well as the activities and values among the Japanese Americans that helped them overcome challenges in the camps.
After the main character, Kiku, is transported to the time when all the Japanese citizens were being rounded up and transported to the incarceration camps. In this section, Hughes puts a lot of emphasis on how these people were being treated like prisoners of war. The busses that they were put on had their windows papered over to prevent the passengers from knowing where they were, presumably for the sake of preventing escape. The people in the camps were fed in a mess hall, with canned food, similar to the rations in a prison. Many people were taken from their families under the suspicion that they may be spies. Later in the story, these conditions are contrasted with the values of the United States, as the Japanese American children, including Kiku, learn about how the Constitution was written on the basis of freedom, security, and the right to property. Throughout the story, Hughes also stresses the importance of community in the camps, even among people who barely knew each other. For example, at the start of the story, Kiku, as well as many other people, worked with their roommates to fix up the barracks that they were housed in. Not only did this improve their housing, it also gave the Japanese Americans a sense that they could rely on each other. This bond was best highlighted when someone was shot by a security guard. Even people who did not know the person who was shot showed up for the funeral that the community held for him. Here, instead of being a weakness that gets them incarcerated, the Japanese Americans’ shared cultural heritage becomes an advantage, as it strengthens the bonds within the community. While the book Displacement does a great job portraying the experiences of Japanese Americans during their internment through a more personal lens, it fails to show the broader effects of this event on the Japanese Americans. For example, the book does not delve much into how many people lost their property as they were being incarcerated, and never got it back. Arguably, this is one of the more personal effects of internment, as Japanese Americans are forced to rebuild their lives from scratch after they were released. The book also does not show much of what happens to the people after they leave the internment camps. While there is a section about Kiku’s grandmother becoming a talented violinist, her grandmother’s experiences are not typical of someone exiting incarceration, since most of them did not have the educational opportunities given to Kiku’s grandmother by a nonprofit. While not explicitly stated, the book stresses the importance of keeping personal and detailed records of what happened in the past. It is necessary for people to remember details and feelings of the people who have gone through these events in order to prevent such things from happening again. The book Displacement provides a great personal view into the lives of Japanese Americans as they went through the effects of Executive order 9066, which differentiates itself from history books that often only include statistics and objective descriptions. |
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