From my anger, frustration, and hurt, I wrote the short story

Host: The sky above the neighborhood was the color of ash and fire — the aftermath of another day that had asked too much and given too little. Streetlights buzzed unevenly along the cracked pavement, and the air carried that heavy quiet cities wear when they’re pretending to sleep.

In a small community center, tucked between a liquor store and an abandoned church, Jack and Jeeny sat across from each other at a folding table covered with papers, coffee cups, and anger — the kind that doesn’t shout anymore, but smolders.

Host: The walls were plastered with murals — faces of youth painted in riotous color — eyes open, watching. Someone had left a radio on in the corner; it played an old soul song, soft, tired, and true.

Jeeny: quietly “Angie Thomas once said, ‘From my anger, frustration, and hurt, I wrote the short story that would later become The Hate U Give.’*”

Jack: leans back, voice low and rough “Yeah. And that anger burned its way across the world.”

Jeeny: “Good. It should have. Some fires deserve to spread.”

Jack: “You really think anger builds anything? Seems to me it just tears down.”

Jeeny: “Tearing down what’s rotten is the start of building what’s right.”

Host: The fluorescent light above them flickered, stuttered — as if the electricity itself was undecided. Jeeny’s hands trembled, not from fear, but from the kind of passion that had no polite place to go.

Jack: “You always romanticize rage, Jeeny. You treat it like it’s art.”

Jeeny: “Because it is. Anger’s just grief with a voice. And art — real art — is what happens when you stop choking on it.”

Jack: “Then why’s it so messy? So loud? You ever think shouting makes people stop listening?”

Jeeny: “You ever think silence makes people stop caring?”

Host: Jack looked at her, eyes heavy, the lines in his face catching the harsh light. Outside, a sirens’ wail tore through the quiet, then faded into nothing.

Jack: “You think writing fixes it? A book? A story?”

Jeeny: “It doesn’t fix it. It remembers it. It refuses to let the world forget.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes fell on the wall — a painted mural of a young boy in a hoodie, surrounded by white doves. The paint had begun to peel, but his face still glowed with defiance.

Jeeny: “You know what Angie did? She turned her rage into witness. That’s not destruction — that’s transformation.”

Jack: “Transformation’s easy to say from a desk. Out there—” gestures toward the street outside “—people are dying, Jeeny. Words don’t stop bullets.”

Jeeny: leans forward, eyes fierce “No, but they make the world look long enough to ask who pulled the trigger.”

Host: The air thickened — the kind of silence that swells right before thunder.

Jack: “You think people care about stories like that? Half the world reads for comfort, not confrontation.”

Jeeny: “Then half the world’s still sleeping through the fire.”

Host: The radio changed tracks — Billie Holiday’s voice seeped into the room, trembling like smoke: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit…”

Jeeny: “Anger made her sing, too. That kind of art — it doesn’t ask for approval. It bleeds for truth.”

Jack: softly “Yeah… but truth hurts.”

Jeeny: “So does injustice.”

Host: The rain began to fall, slow and cold, tapping against the windows like impatient fingers. The rhythm of it filled the spaces between their words.

Jack: “You ever get tired, Jeeny? Carrying it all — the fight, the fury, the hope?”

Jeeny: pauses, stares at her hands “Every day. But that’s why I write. You can’t live with all that fire inside. You either burn out — or you build something.”

Jack: “So you build with pain.”

Jeeny: “No. With purpose.”

Host: Jack rubbed his temples, eyes closed, as if trying to understand a language he once spoke but had forgotten.

Jack: “You really believe words can change people?”

Jeeny: “They already have. You just stopped noticing.”

Jack: “Name one thing that changed because someone got angry and wrote about it.”

Jeeny: “The Hate U Give. Millions of kids who never saw themselves in a book before suddenly did. They felt heard. They started talking. That’s the beginning of every revolution, Jack — when people finally believe their stories matter.”

Host: Jeeny’s voice trembled on that last line — not weakness, but reverence. Jack looked at her, something breaking in his expression, something almost like understanding.

Jack: “You know, I used to believe anger was the problem. I grew up thinking control was strength. You keep calm, you endure, you outlast. But now…” he looks at her “…maybe control is just another form of silence.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. We were taught to swallow what should’ve been spoken. Angie didn’t. She turned the noise into a heartbeat.”

Jack: “A heartbeat can stop.”

Jeeny: “Only if you stop listening.”

Host: The rain intensified — it wasn’t a drizzle anymore, it was rhythm, percussion, the sky joining their conversation.

Jack: “So what about forgiveness? You ever write from that?”

Jeeny: “Forgiveness comes after the story’s told. Not before.”

Jack: “You don’t think that’s dangerous?”

Jeeny: “No. I think it’s honest.”

Host: A clap of thunder rolled through the air, shaking the glass. Jeeny’s pencil, lying on the table beside her notebook, began to vibrate slightly from the tremor. She looked at it — then at Jack.

Jeeny: “You ever notice how storms sound like applause from heaven?”

Jack: half-laughs “That’s poetic.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s what anger sounds like when it finally finds harmony.”

Host: The storm outside grew louder. The lights flickered. And in that dim, shifting glow, Jeeny began to write — slow, deliberate strokes of her pen against the paper, as if catching lightning in words.

Jack watched her, silent.

Jack: “What are you writing?”

Jeeny: “What you just said. What I just felt. Something worth remembering.”

Jack: “You think it’ll change anything?”

Jeeny: “It’ll change me. That’s enough for tonight.”

Host: She wrote as the storm raged — her hand steady, her eyes bright, her breath slow. Jack stood, walked to the window, and stared out at the street. Two kids ran by, laughing in the rain, their sneakers splashing through puddles like punctuation.

Jack: softly “You know, I used to think civilization was built on reason. Now I think it’s built on people too angry to stay quiet.”

Jeeny: without looking up “That’s the truest thing you’ve ever said.”

Host: He turned, watched her — a single lamp glowing over her shoulder, casting light over the page, over the anger, over the hope that looked suspiciously like faith.

Jeeny: “Angie was right. Sometimes the only way to survive what breaks you is to write it down — to make it bleed onto something that doesn’t bleed back.”

Jack: “And if no one reads it?”

Jeeny: looks up, smiling sadly “Then at least it didn’t die inside me.”

Host: The storm began to fade. The rain softened into drizzle, then into silence. The room was dim now, but still alive — with words, with memory, with the quiet hum of human defiance.

Jack walked over, set his hand gently on her notebook, the ink still wet.

Jack: “You know… maybe art really is born from what hurts most.”

Jeeny: “Not born from it, Jack. Redeemed by it.”

Host: And as the last of the thunder rolled into the distance, they sat there in the afterglow — two people, one truth:

That sometimes, rage is creation. That sometimes, art begins where logic ends. And that the most human thing of all is not to erase the pain — but to turn it into a story the world can no longer ignore.

Host: The camera pulls back — through the window, past the wet streets, past the painted faces on the wall — until all that remains is the faint light of a single lamp, burning against the night.

Because from anger, and hurt, and fire — sometimes comes the only kind of beauty that matters:
the kind that refuses to stay silent.