The Hate U Give: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Lisa and Starr spend the night at Carlos’s to avoid the riots, but protests continue to fill the streets when they drive home the next morning. Starr is terrified when they have to pass throughout a police checkpoint, and grips the door handle. They make it through without issue, but Starr does not let go of the handle until they get home.

Back at their house, Maverick asks Starr to hang out with him that day, promising her ice cream and the chance to  watch Harry Potter. Starr relays her father’s theory that the Hogwarts houses are really just gangs; they wear the same colors, never snitch on each other, and some (the Death Eaters, at least) even have matching tattoos.

Starr gets into the car with Maverick, who plays Tupac as he drives. Starr lightheartedly mocks him for showing his age, but Maverick insists Tupac cared about uplifting black people. Starr tells Maverick what Khalil told her about Tupac’s definition of Thug Life. Maverick asks what Starr thinks Tupac meant, and she replies those at the “bottom of society” “get the short end of the stick,” and are also feared the most by society.

Maverick continues to push Starr to explain how drugs, racism, and a lack of opportunity trap communities like Garden Heights in a cycle of poverty and crime. He says that people become drug dealers because they need money and “don’t have a lot of other ways to get it.” He connects this to the lack of proper education in minority communities, drug industries, and a justice system that disproportionately punishes black people.

After listening to her father’s words, Starr realizes that the protests and anger in her community are much bigger than Khalil. She decides that she cannot be silent if she wants the system of oppression to change, stating “my silence isn’t helping Us.”

When Maverick and Starr arrive back at the store they find DeVante.  It becomes clear that he is trying to hide from someone; he finally admits he is trying to hide from King because King wants him to “handle”—kill—the people who killed his brother Dalvin. Starr realizes that the gunshots she heard at Big D’s party were the same that killed DeVante’s brother. DeVante wants advice from Maverick on getting out of the gang, since Maverick got out years earlier.

Maverick says that his father was the “biggest drug dealer” Garden Heights had ever seen, effectively making Maverick a King from birth. Maverick had to “king” since childhood as a way to survive; people would have it out for him because of his father, but as a King Lord people would have his back. Once he had children, he decided the gang was not worth it anymore. He took a drug charge for King and went to prison for three years. There he reconnected with his father, who told him how much he regretted missing time with his own children. In exchange for protecting King, the latter let Maverick leave the gang.

Maverick agrees to help DeVante get free of King, and says he can start by working in the store. While showing him how to put price stickers on items, DeVante opens up to Starr about feeling helpless as he watched Dalvin die—a feeling Starr knows all too well. Maverick allows DeVante to stay with the Carters that night. Later Starr overhears her parents fighting, Lisa angry with Maverick for putting the family in danger by bringing DeVante home, and more broadly for insisting they continue to live in Garden Heights. She says has made her choice and will do what she needs to do for her children.