English 9 Replaces “To Kill a Mockingbird” With “The Hate U Give” Looking at the efforts behind the approval process for “The Hate U Give” ARTICLE, PHOTO & ILLUSTRATIONS BY HAYLIE YEE • DESIGN BY AMANDA REBOREDO
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nglish teacher Jessica Wall’s pilot program to replace the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” with “The Hate U Give” in UPA’s English 9 curriculum was approved on Sept. 23 by Executive Director David Porter. Freshmen began reading the novel on Oct. 18. “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas follows Black sixteen-year-old Starr Carter in the modern-day South, as the character grapples with racism, police brutality and activism after witnessing police murder her Black friend. It is the first of UPA’s book replacements not on the Recommended Literature List provided by the California Department of Education. In contrast, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee explores civil rights and racism in the segregated suburbs of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression and Jim Crow era. It is narrated by Scout Finch—a
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white girl who ages from six to almost nine years old—whose lawyer father is asked to defend a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. “The main issue that I have with ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is it’s a novel about race from a white person’s perspective, versus ‘The Hate U Give’ is a novel about injustice and race from a Black person’s perspective,” Wall said. “How can you have a real discussion and say what the issues are if you’re only hearing from the person in power’s perspective?” Wall compared “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe’s novel helped readers begin to care about the issue of slavery, but it is not considered the ideal novel today because of its comfortable, white point of view. “My concern with how racism is handled in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is that it is handled in a
way that makes white people feel comfortable about it,” Wall said. “‘Oh, we’re doing the right thing, things are going to get better as long as one person speaks up, things will be handled.’ It covers it, but it doesn’t challenge [the ideas of racism].” The usage of the n-word by multiple white characters as a slur was not a factor in Wall’s decision to remove “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Wall highlighted that another novel in the English 9 curriculum, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, also employs the word’s usage by white characters. “The n-word is used for a specific purpose to point out the nature of racism and how it affects characters,” she said. “Although it has been a reason [‘To Kill a Mockingbird’] has been challenged or censored in other school districts, for our kids I feel like it’s valuable to confront
these things in a controlled setting.” Senior Nahom Belay was one of the only Black students in his period when he read “To Kill a Mockingbird” his freshman year in 2018.