"I swear those things are so fresh": Sneakers, Race, and Mobility in The Hate U Give

"While she lives in Garden Heights, a predominantly poor, black neighborhood, she attends a rich, mostly white private high school called Williamson Prep. Herein lies one of the novel's central tensions; since the two worlds Starr inhabits are in a sense opposite, she must split herself to function in each one. Garden Heights Starr is at home in the black, poor community; Williamson Starr is amid the multitude of rich, white peers. To do so, the protagonist uses sneakers to cross realms, so to speak, allowing the shoes to act as material representations of the social and racial boundaries she traverses daily. I wish to analyze how Starr uses sneakers to cross these lines between her school and home. In the novel, Thomas confronts the racist institutions that determine color lines and implements specifically black cultural symbols and capital to serve as foils to the racist ideologies."