She co-authored the first major comic-book about and by a young black girl (Niobe: Her Name Is Death). She has twice appeared on Time magazine’s annual list of 30 Most Influential Teens (she turns 20 this week). Two years after her movie breakthrough as Rue in 2012’s The Hunger Games, she went viral with a self-made YouTube film called Don’t Cash Crop on My Cornrows, in which she raised an eyebrow at the appropriation of black style by white figures such as Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry. In real life, Stenberg is already an outspoken activist. The Hate U Give follows Starr’s journey from passive witness towards outspoken activism, as she awakens to the inequalities and injustices around her. If ever an actor was destined to play Starr, it is surely Stenberg: it’s difficult to work out where the character ends and the actor begins. When Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland were killed, my friends and my family cried for them.”
Even though I personally have never experienced losing someone to police brutality, I understand it’s something real, and within black communities we feel the pain of that institutional racism. Filming that scene was hard, says Stenberg: “I had this understanding the whole time that this was real. The movie, directed by George Tillman Jr, could well follow suit, with its built-in following and a rising swell of critical acclaim, especially around Stenberg’s powerful performance.Īfter the shooting incident, neither she nor we fully recover. Angie Thomas’s source novel has been a publishing phenomenon.
The Hate U Give is already the most visible product of this to date. Their stories, among others, have fuelled the Black Lives Matter movement, and now we are starting to see them reflected in popular culture ( Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, for example, dramatised the shooting of Oscar Grant). The victims’ names have almost become a mantra: Castile, Freddie Gray, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland – all young African Americans killed by law enforcement, each an avoidable tragedy. To see the stricken expression on Stenberg’s face during the shooting scene is to recall Diamond Reynolds, partner of Philando Castile, who livestreamed the aftermath of Castile’s 2016 police shooting from the passenger seat while he bled to death beside her. The Hate U Give is fictional, but barely. When their car is pulled over, Starr follows the drill. By this stage, Starr’s father has already given her The Talk, the time-honoured ritual where African-American parents instruct their children how to behave if stopped by the police: be polite, stay calm, put your hands where they can see them. A ny resemblance between The Hate U Give and your average teen movie evaporates about 20 minutes in, when 16-year-old Starr Carter, played by Amandla Stenberg, witnesses a police officer shoot dead her friend Khalil at point-blank range.
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