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

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.