What do you think is wrong with The 57 Bus winning an award? Do you like the book and author?
You have activated Rant Mode TM
All my friends are probably sick of me ranting about this book and how much it pissed me off. (It's one of those "okay I'm done." *five seconds later* "AND ANOTHER THING" situations 😂) I wrote a review of this book a while back, which can be found on my website, but I'll go into some of the major points here as well.
Quick overview of the book: The 57 Bus is a non-fiction book written by a journalist named Dashka Slater. It covers a hate crime that occurred in California in 2013. An agender teen named Sasha was riding a public bus and fell asleep. They were wearing a skirt. Another teen (Richard) was also riding this bus with his friends. He didn't know Sasha, but upon seeing them asleep on the bus, he and his friends thought it would be "funny" to set Sasha's skirt on fire (because Sasha didn't present as female and, y'know, people who aren't women wearing skirts is like "offensive" or some shit idk). Sasha woke up on the bus literally on fire. They were burned very badly and had to have surgery. The 57 Bus tells the stories of Sasha and Richard and covers their lives before and after that horrific day.
Deadnaming: Sasha is repeatedly deadnamed throughout the book. There is no indication that they consented to their deadname being published. Deadnaming Sasha does nothing. To quote a popular social media post "if you know a trans person’s deadname, no you don’t." You delete that shit from your memory and move on. That is not their name, and unless they specifically tell you to use it (like in front of family or other people they're not out to), you do not know their deadname. Sasha is also referred to with he/him pronouns occasionally despite explicitly giving their pronouns as they/them. The author also deadnames one of Sasha's trans friends and uses their transness as like a kind of shock/plot twist like "oh hey these kids knew each other before they both came out as trans!!" Also, the author uses she/her pronouns for Sasha's friend before she reveals her big "plot twist" even though he is a trans man and uses he/him pronouns. I've brought this up with trans friends to make sure it wasn't just like cis girl ally crying transphobia, and the people I've spoken to were all super uncomfy with the author's misuse of deadnames and pronouns. Obviously, that doesn't mean that all trans people feel that way, but it's a weird choice that alienates people in that community, so like... bad call imo
Sympathy for Richard: Look, I am a white girl. I don't know what it's like to grow up in the US as a Black boy. I will never fully understand that experience. I recognize that it is difficult and that there's some frankly horrifying bullshit that Black boys and men are put through. However, that doesn't make it okay for them to set people on fire???? There's a weird amount of sympathy for Richard in a "he had a rough life" kind of way when he literally SET SOMEONE ON FIRE. Like, yeah, we need to address systemic racism in our society and move toward racial justice and equity, but we also can't just be like "oh he didn't know any better. society made him that way uwu" when someone literally commits a hate crime.
Misunderstandings of queer identities: One of these isn't on the author, but one of them is. I initially picked up this book because I was writing an annotated bibliography of youth literature with asexual protagonists/subjects or resources that covered asexuality. One of the Library of Congress subject headings for this book was "Asexual people—California—Violence against—Juvenile literature." Here's the thing: Sasha is asexual, sure. But the crime that was committed against them wasn't because they were asexual but because they were agender. So that's like just a complete misunderstanding of terminology there. Secondly, the author includes a glossary of LGBTQ+ terms but chose to write her own definitions rather than, say, going to a reputable source or, idk, asking queer people? As such, she defines being asexual as "Not physically attracted to anyone," which is kind of reductive and overly simplistic. It's a spectrum.
Sources? What Sources? (aka Citation Needed): SERIOUSLY, LADY, WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR INFO FROM??? She says that she got some information or quotes from the social media pages of Sasha and Richard (and maybe their friends? idr), but other than that, she gives 0 indication of the sources of any of the facts she spews. Like, there are parts where she gives statistics. Like hard numbers. And she doesn't say where she got the numbers from??? There are no in-text citations, no footnotes, and no backmatter explaining where she's getting this information. And like hey, she's a journalist, so maybe she's not used to like doing full-on academic source citing, but come on, you can't just use numbers to back up your argument, refuse to tell me where they came from, and then expect me to just accept it at face value. You can't just say you did "extensive research" and refuse to elaborate. You could have googled that and gotten your numbers from a Twitter shitpost for all I know.
Format: This is a non-fiction book about a real and traumatic incident that actually happened. It was written by a journalist. So why, why does it randomly switch between prose and poetry?? What is the point of the poetry? What does it add? Nothing, that's what it adds.
I don't understand why this book won awards. I'm not sure who was on the committees for those awards that year, but like.... I'd be surprised if there was more than like maybe 1 trans person at most (and I kind of doubt that there was even 1).
Anyway, that's my big rant about The 57 Bus and why I hate it. If there are trans people who felt differently about it, I'd love to hear different perspectives! That also goes for people of color who have comments on the way that Richard was portrayed and treated throughout the book.
