Episode 40: Banned Book Review #9: The 57 Bus

Are you doing these critical things to help your child succeed academically? Take the quiz now to find out the important actions you can take to enhance your child's education. Go to my website, liberationthrougheducation.com quiz and take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with with school administrators and educators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I will review another book from the Banned book list, the 57 A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater. The intent of this and other monthly book reviews is to examine, to analyze, to investigate what why these books were on the banned book list for a US K12 public school reading for the 2021-2022 school year. I'll continue to review these books until I complete the list of books that you're most interested in and that resonate with you. We only have one more book to go the main characters in this book are Sasha and Agender, teenager Michael, Sasha's best friend Richard, Sherry Lloyd and Janine, Richard's mother. The setting is in East Oakland, California in 2013. Here's my summary of the book. This book is based on a true story wherein the pieces of the story were woven together from a variety of sources including interviews, documents, letters, videos, social media posts and public records. Sasha, sitting near the back of the bus, is wearing a T shirt, a black fleece jacket and a gauzy white skirt. Sasha is a senior in high school. Richard is a 16 year old junior at Oakland High School and he was goofing around on the bus. Oakland's per capita rate of violent crimes in 2013 made it the second most dangerous city in America. Richard lived in East Oakland, where the bulk of the city's murders happened and where the schools were shabbier, the test scores lower and there were also more liquor stores and fewer grocery stores. The 57 bus traversed an 11 mile path from one end of the city to the other, crossing through the middle class Foothills where Sasha lived and where Richard went to school, and then terminating in the neighborhood where Richard lived. The two teenagers journeys overlapped every afternoon on the bus for a mere eight minutes. If it had not been for the 57 bus, their paths might never have crossed at all. Sasha refers by the pronoun they. As a young child, age 7, Sasha was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum. Sasha was very smart, which was a common trait for the kids who went to Maybach High School, a private high school with roughly 100 students. Sasha had a good relationship with their parents. Richard was a junior at Oakland High School. The school was 44% Asian, 33% African American and 18% Latino. Few white families sent their kids to this school. Richard's best friend was Sherry. Although some freshmen and sophomores in Oakland High School were assigned to work with Caprice Wilson, a truant officer, Richard volunteered to be part of her program. She understood the East Oakland Lifestyle in the 1980s, when crack cocaine was just hitting the streets. Caprice dated a notorious gang member, Lil Jerry, when she was younger. But she eventually turned her life around, attended college, graduated, and became an elementary school teacher. She then moved on to become a truant officer for the school district. She treated the students in her program as family, and she was their mother. The family slogan of her program was never let your obstacles become more important than your goal. The goals were to go to class, get your grades up, graduate, stay out of jail and survive. Richard was close to his mother, Jasmine, who had Richard when she was 14 and a half years old. Jasmine wanted Richard's life to be different from hers, to go to college. But these were big dreams in her part of town. Of the roughly 600 African American boys who started Oakland high schools as freshmen each year, only about 300 ended up graduating. Fewer than 100 graduated with requirements needed to attend a California state college or university. The odds of landing in the back of a police cruiser, on the other hand, were much better. African American boys made up less than 30% of kids under age population, but accounted for nearly 75% of of all juvenile arrests. Richard wanted people to be happy. He was always joking and goofing around. He would basically do anything for a laugh. At 14, Richard was sent to juvenile hall for fighting. He eventually went to jail, but was released on GPS early and then eventually was sentenced to a group home in Redding, California, a three and a half hour drive from Oakland. He would stay there until the following summer, more than a year after his arrest. When he started his junior year at Oakland High School. He had just gotten out of the group home. One of Richard's friends, Skeet, ran away from the Southern California group home that he was sent to because of fighting that he and Richard and their friends had gotten into. Skeet was murdered at 17 years old, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong company. Richard hung out a lot with his cousin Lloyd, who was two years older than Richard. Sasha was already at the back of the 57 bus. On November 4, 2013, at 4:52pm, Sasha had fallen asleep. Richard and his cousin Lloyd boarded the bus. The two of them recognized a friend, Jamal, who was also on the bus. Jamal pointed at Sasha and whispered, look at this dude. Lloyd turned and looked over his shoulder. He cackled. Jamal hands Richard a lighter. After flicking the lighter for the fourth time, Richard set Sasha's skirt on fire. Richard leapt off the bus through the back door. Lloyd started to follow, but then he looked back and stopped, transfixed as Sasha's skirt erupted in a sheet of flame. When the doors closed again, he hadn't moved. All of this was captured on the surveillance video in the bus, which is standard operations protocol. Near the middle of the bus, two men leapt from their seats, told Sasha to get down, and managed to smother Sasha's flaming skirt with his coat while the other man stamped out the burning tatters that flamed around them. It was over in seconds. The driver pulled the bus to the curb and Sasha scrambled to a standing position, dazed and in shock, one man remarked, that boy was on fire, wasn't he? As Sasha pushed through the back doors to the sidewalk, a passenger suggested to Sasha, you need to call an ambulance, man. After he jumped off the bus, Richard strode away, trying to look casual. But then he heard Sasha's screams and he turned around and went back. He stared at the bus, mouth open. Richard then ran after the bus and suddenly it lurched to the curb and passengers had spilled out, yelling and coughing. Another bus came. The NL had pulled up behind it, and Richard, Jamal, and Lloyd half walked and half ran to this bus. When Richard got home, his mother asked him what was wrong, but he didn't answer. The doctor in the burn unit of the San Francisco hospital where Sasha was taken assessed Sasha's injuries and estimated that the burns covered 22% of Sasha's body. Some of the birds were third degree burns. In the meantime, Richard had been arrested while at school. Six days later, the district attorney decided to charge Richard as an adult for a hate crime. When Richard was interviewed by the police without the presence of his parents or an attorney, he stated that he committed the crime because he was homophobic. Richard got booked in at juvenile hall. The district attorney charged him with two felonies, aggravated mayhem and assault with intent to cause bodily injury. Each charge also contained a hate crime clause that would increase Richard's sentence by an additional one to three years in state prison. If convicted, he faced a maximum sentence of life in prison, which is a punishment he never would have faced if he had been charged as a juvenile. Lloyd and Jamal were never interviewed, arrested or charged. Sasha had one surgery to treat the burns, which was soon followed by a second surgery. A third surgery was when Sasha was able to have a skin graft. Richard wrote two letters to Sasha asking for forgiveness, but his lawyer wouldn't send them until the case was resolved. It would be 14 months before Sasha read those letters. Sasha was released from the hospital 23 days after the fire, and things were starting to return to normal because Sasha was starting a hangout with friends again. Fall turned into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer. Sasha was getting ready to go off to college at mit, and Richard was going through the process of the legal system's multiple hearings. It was Now September of 2014, nearly a year after the fire, and the case still wasn't settled. In October of 2014, the district attorney's office rejected a plea deal of five years and instead proposed seven years in state prison. Richard signed the plea deal. Under the terms of the deal, Richard's sentence could still be reduced to five years in state prison if he received two positive evaluations of his conduct for six months in juvenile hall. If any of the two evaluations over the six month period had a black mark on it, the seven year sentence would stand. If it did, Richard would be transferred from juvenile hall to an adult prison. When he turned 18 in January 2015, Richard left juvenile hall and was placed in a youth correctional facility known as CHAD in Stockton, California. Richard did receive two positive evaluations in six months, and the judge reduced his sentence from seven years to five years with credit for time served. He he'd be out just before his 21st birthday. The judge also recommended that Richard serve the totality of that time in the juvenile system. Richard turned 18 in Alameda County Juvenile hall just before being transferred back to Chad. He hadn't spent a birthday at home since he'd turned 14. His 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th birthdays had all been spent locked up. Richard did manage to earn his high school diploma while he was at Chad and Sasha decided to major in urban planning at MIT because of a love for buses. Here are my overall impressions of this book. The book does have a few accolades is a New York Times bestseller, a Stonewall Book Award winner, Mike Morgan and Larry Roman's Children's and Young Adult Literature Award, and a YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Finalists this was the ninth book that I have reviewed from the K12 band book list. This book tackles the topic of a hate crime perpetuated against the protected class. The title of the book certainly draws your attention and curiosity. Despite the intrigue of the story, the author spent an inordinate amount of time providing definitions, examples, scenarios in order to substantiate a non binary decision and lifestyle of the main character, Sasha. The story could have been told in a much more condensed yet compelling way without all the sideline positioning for a chosen lifestyle. Thank goodness the chapters were short, the gender references were confusing and the explanations unnecessary. I think the readers would have gotten the background of the main character's gender neutral life and relationships just by describing Sasha as non binary. Roughly 20% of the book was devoted to this unnecessary long explanation and background for Sasha, the apparent audience that the author wanted to reach. The author spent an entire chapter explaining how the teenage brain worked, how teenage emotions have gone into hyperdrive via the limbic system, yet reason and logic were slower to catch up as they were activated in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning and deliberation. Teens are more likely to make decisions with the limbic system rather than from the prefrontal cortex, especially in presence of peers. This chapter seemed to be included as one way to explain or examine Richard's behavior in committing a biased crime, although it's unclear what the author's intention was. The author also included irrelevant chapters like the one about a petition on we the People website to bring the issue of non binary gender to the government's attention. This had nothing to do with the incident. It seems as if the author is standing on a soapbox promoting a particular lifestyle. It just doesn't add to the story or the chapter devoted to Chad juvenile facility and the history of how the facility was run 10 years ago and how it changed in 2015. Interesting, but irrelevant. Additionally, the author chose to include a chapter on some gender neutrality milestones to support her point about an alternative lifestyle. Again an unnecessary inclusion that had nothing to do with the story. She also chose to include a chapter on statistics of the US juvenile incarceration based on figures currently available as of 2016. Good to know. However, the numbers speak for themselves, yet they're available within a number of sources outside of this nonfiction book. I think this book should have been banned simply because of the way the author overemphasizes and alternative lifestyle community. This book does not address all young adults, just those of a particular lifestyle. The sadness and the reality of the crime that was committed could possibly relate to young adult readers. However, it was overshadowed by a lot of extraneous storytelling. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please follow my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this also I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a rating, a review, or a comment on Apple, Spotify, or podchaser if you like this podcast. The best way to support me and help me grow it is by leaving a review. This helps my rankings and entices other people to listen to the show and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and to mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, connect with me on Instagram, Facebook with the handle kimjfields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. 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