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Angie Thomas: Hip-Hop Author and Voice of Change

Angie Thomas was a teen rapper before writing the New York Times bestsellers The Hate U Give and On the Come Up. As a child in Jackson, Mississippi, Angie Thomas was surrounded by civil rights history. But instead of the equality her elders had fought for, she grew up amid poverty and gun violence. When she didn't see herself in books, she developed a love of hip-hop music and even wrote her own rhymes. Going to a mostly white, affluent college showed her just how different her upbringing was from that of her classmates.