Neoliberalism, Incarceration, and Fracturing the Institution of the African American Family in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give

Samah Hamed Mohammad  Saleh; Mahmoud  Zidan

doi:10.35516/hum.v51i5.5035

Authors

Samah Hamed Mohammad Saleh Department of English Language and Literature, The School of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9662-1028
Mahmoud Zidan Department of English Language and Literature, The School of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3450-7593

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v51i5.5035

Keywords:

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas, Neoliberalism, the African American family, the Neoliberal African American Novel

Abstract

Objectives: This paper aims at highlighting the effect of neoliberalism on African American literature. More specifically, it discusses the concept of the neoliberal novel and its relation to the family in the African American context by studying Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (2017).

Methods: The study employs different theorizations of neoliberalism, especially those theorizations that make the intersection between class and race visible such as the ones provided by Spence, Brown, and Harvey. In order to investigate the portrayal of neoliberalism in the novel, the researchers make use of textual analysis.

Results: The study argues that The Hate U Give depicts how neoliberalism utilizes moral panic to literally and allegorically incarcerate African Americans and fragment their families through both criminalization and stigmatization. The novel also strategically resists neoliberalism by acknowledging past and present traumas and sufferings, reinforcing a positive collective image of the African American community, and building a community that is based on a culture of difference and resists the negative effects of neoliberalism.

Conclusions: The study concludes that Thomas’s novel exposes the destructive effects of neoliberalism on African American communities and families. In so doing, the novel resists the neoliberal discourse, but sometimes with some limitations.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New Press.

Angie Thomas. Walker Books - Angie Thomas. (n.d.). Retrieved January 22, 2023, from https://www.walker.co.uk/contributors/Angie-Thomas-20087.aspx

Berry, M. (2019). Media and neoliberalism. Media and Society, 57-82.

Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books.

Bulatao, R. & Anderson, N. (2004). Understanding racial and ethnic differences in health in late life: A research agenda. The National Academic Press.

Camp, J. (2009). ‘We Know This Place’: Neoliberal racial regimes and the Katrina circumstance. American Quarterly, 61(3), 693–717.

Collins, V.E. & Rothe, D. L. (2019). The violence of neoliberalism: Crime, harm and inequality. Routledge.

Cummings, A. (2020). Thug life: Hip-Hop’s curious relationship with criminal justice. Santa Carla Law Review, 50(2), 515-546.

Davis, A. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? Seven Stories Press.

De Boever, A. (2019). What is the neoliberal novel? Neoliberalism, finance, and biopolitics: B. Sibyelle & N. Birgit (Ed.). New approaches to the twenty-first-century Anglophone novel 157-174. Springer International.

Dillon, S. (2018). Life escapes: Neoliberal economics, the underground, and fugitive freedom. Fugitive life: The queer politics of the prison state 54-83. Duke University Press.

Edwards, F. Lee, Hedwig. & Esposito, M. (2019). Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. PNAS, 116(34), 16793-16798.

Gauthier, F. (2017). Religion is not what it used to be. consumerism, neoliberalism, and the global reshaping of religion. Religion and Global Society. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2017/10/religion-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-consumerism-neoliberalism-and-the-global-reshaping-of-religion/

Gomer, J. (2017). ‘They should have called Katrina ‘Gone with the Wind’’: Charles Burnett’s Quiet as Kept and the neoliberal racial state. Soules, 19(2), 162- 176.

Haddad, V. (2018). Nobody’s protest novel: Novelistic strategies of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The Comparatist, 42 (1), 40-59.

Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. & Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the crisis: mugging, the state, and law and order. The Macmillan Press LTD.

Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.

Hohle, R. (2015). Race and the origins of American neoliberalism. Routledge.

Hudson, I. & Hudson, M. (2003). REMOVING THE VEIL? Commodity fetishism, fair trade, and the environment. Organization & Environment, 16 (4), 413–430.

Hunt, A. (1997). ‘Moral Panic’ and moral language in the media. The British Journal of Sociology, 48(4), 629–48.

Kotova, A. (2020). Beyond courtesy stigma: Towards a multi-faceted and cumulative model of stigmatisation of families of people in prison. Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, (1), 1-18.

Lyman, J. (2012). A punitive bind: Policing, poverty, and neoliberalism in New York City. Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, 15(1), 177-221.

Mariani, P. (2001). Overview: Law, order, and neoliberalism. Social Justice, 28(3), 2–4.

Nilges, M. (2015). Neoliberalism and the time of the novel. Textual Practice, 29(2), 357-377.

Owen, G. (2019). Adolescence, blackness, and the politics of respectability in Monster and The Hate U Give. The Lion and the Unicorn, 43(2), 236-260.

Pendenza, M, & Lamattina, V. (2019). Rethinking self-responsibility: An alternative vision to the neoliberal concept of freedom. American Behavioral Scientist, 63(1), 100-115.

Pepper, A. (2017). Race, violence and neoliberalism: crime fiction in the era of Ferguson and Black Lives Matter. Textual Practice, 33(6), 963-982.

Ramesh, R. (2021). Neoliberalism and the erosion of the American criminal (In)justice system: A COVID perspective [Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia]. https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/pdf/24/1.0396878/4

Rich, J.M. (1986). Neoliberalism and black education. The Journal of Negro Education, 55(1), 21–28.

Shelat, J. (2019). ‘I swear those things are so fresh’: Sneakers, race, and mobility in The Hate U Give. CEA Critic, 81(1), 70-74.

Spence, L. K. (2015). Knocking the hustle: Against the neoliberal turn in black politics. Punctum Books.

Spivak, G. C. (2010). Can the subaltern speak? (1999). In Can the Subaltern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rasalind C. Morris, 21-78. Columbia University Press.

Thomas, A. (2017). The hate U give. Balzer + Bray.

Thomas, A. (2021). Concrete rose. Walker Books.

Thomas. (n.d.). About - Angie Thomas. About - Angie Thomas. Retrieved January 23, 2023, from https://undefined/about/Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.

Tillman. G. (Director). (2018). The hate U give [Film]. Fox 2000 Pictures.

Wolff, K. (2013). When more is not more: Consumption and consumerism within the neoliberal early childhood assemblage(s). Global Studies of Childhood, 3(3), 328-338.

Wrenn, M. (2014). Identity, identity politics, and neoliberalism. Panoeconomicus, 61(4), 503-515.