Dashka Slater

This riveting nonfiction book for teens about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment tells the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California.

A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

The 57 Bus

great introduction to ideas of (restorative) justice and nuances in the conversation of imprisonment for middle and high school aged children

yasi

Finn James

Paula Plaza Ponte 

This book. Sigh. The telling is phenomenal. The writing, poetic. Characters stay with you long after the narrative is done. The moment that changed their lives was so quick but the aftermath lingers.

Ryan 

4-4.5 stars

wow i actually finished a book in a day, i'm amazed and proud of myself for that

in addition, i'm glad that i read this when i live in berkeley (over a thousand feet away from sasha's high school) and having to take the 57 bus before. it discusses a lot of topics that i would never thought about. even though this circles about the treatment of LGBTQ+ folx and juvenile incarceration, it also discusses the effectiveness of restorative justice and the legal process and system that we need to dismantle for its racist policies and behaviors towards Blacks in the system.

such an invigorating read!

Gwyn Dill

This book was just "ok" but honestly I think I would've enjoyed it more if I actually had read it vs listened to the audiobook. The narrator was so monotone & gave NO emotion to anything she read. It was like she was reading my grocery list to me at times. That said, I learned a lot about gender nonconforming individuals & the juvenile detention system - so it wasn't a disappointing read. That's why I think that I would've preferred to read the book vs listening to it. Also the ending was rather sudden - I expected more of a "where they are now" than what we got.

Lamia Hajani

Oakland isn’t all that far from me but I hadn’t heard about this event before. It’s a very good blow by blow account of the events and people involved. It is hard to unequivocally point out a villain in this one- it feels like everyone loses in the end.

Jeannette Ordas

Like a John Krakauer book for the YA crowd. Excellent reading.

priya

3.5 stars

TW: transphobia, racism, fire/burns/arson, incarceration, gun violence

I think my expectations were too high. Sorry to start of with the negative parts, but this is what came to my mind first. The writing was... less than mediocre. I didn't feel for Sasha or Richard. Yes, Slater has a journalistic writing style, but I think The 57 Bus would've been much more impactful if she focussed more of her time on Sasha and Richard as people, rather than subjects for a report. The story is about them - about their actions, their thoughts, their experiences with discrimination as members of different minority groups. I don't mean to say that Slater treats Sasha or Richard inhumanely or anything. She tells us about them from so many different people's persectives and it was really interesting. But it is a lot of flat-out telling with almost no emotional aspect. 

That being said, The 57 Bus is very readable. It was my first time (and only time so far) reading about an agender person and the representation really meant a lot to me. LGBTQA+ people are so marginalised in books, and if they do appear they are usually gay or lesbian or bisexual. The few representations of trans people are usually FTM or MTF, so reading the real life story of a non-binary, and agender to be specific, teenager was amazing. 

“Other people seemed to have a file in their brain marked Gender. Sasha ransacked their own brain looking for the file, but it didn’t seem to be there.”

“And anyway, terms like homosexual or heterosexual made no sense if you didn’t identify as one gender or another.”

I loved that Slater started off by showing us how accepting the Oakland community is of LGBTQA+ people.

“Okay, not male. Okay, not female. So, neither? Okay.

“That was the process and it took about ten seconds,” he says. “Then it was over.”

It was really nice to see that, even when the rest of the book we encounter a lot of transphobia, homophobia and racism against African Americans. I mean, The 57 Bus tells a true story and it's really sad in that way. It's really sad that most of the time we read about (real) non-binary people, it's when they experience traumatic violence and discrimination. But, I think Slater's representation of Sasha and the other trans people that she interviewed is fair and it gave me hope.

“a handsome, apple-cheeked young man named Andrew would look back at that conversation as one of the most validating moments of his life.

“It wasn’t that I was expecting Sasha to react poorly, because I know Sasha, and Sasha is easily one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and also one of the kindest,” he recalled. “But taking a risk like that and having everything be okay afterward felt so good.” 

Honestly, there's such little representation of trans characters in books that I had to keep reminding myself that I'm reading about a real person. I have never met an agender person (as far as I know, at least). Sorry to keep going on about this, but there's actually nothing like reading about a non-binary person. Yes, I know I few non-binary people in real life but I guess it feels very personal when reading a book. It's just between Sasha, Slater and me. 

I think Slater wrote about Richard really well. There was no point where I even slightly hated him, and that's hard to do since he sets Sasha's skirt on fire, causing them severe burns on most of their legs. Slater clearly points out how wrong and hurtful Richard's actions are, but she does it in a way that puts him in context. 

“So how should we look at teenagers who commit bias crimes? Are they kids with deep-seated character flaws who are likely to be antisocial bigots for the rest of their lives? Or are they simply manifesting the worst aspects of adolescence—an obsession with conformity, group identity, and peer approval combined with an appetite for risk and sensation?”

She shows us how pervasive the discrimination against African American teenagers is in Oakland, and across America. She shows us how hard it is for African Americans to succeed, live or just survive in a society where the everday racism they experience presents far too many challenges to hope to overcome.

“Of the roughly six hundred African American boys who started Oakland high schools as freshmen each year, only about three hundred ended up graduating. Fewer than one hundred graduated with the requirements needed to attend a California state college or university. The odds of landing in the back of a police cruiser ... were much better. [They] made up less than 30 percent of Oakland’s underage population but accounted for nearly 75 percent of all juvenile arrests.”

Slater shows us how easy it is for Richard, for anyone who is growing up in a similar environment to Richard, to slip up and change your future entirely. It's terrifying and heartbreaking to see how one act leads Richard so deeply into what he never wanted to be. Slater definitely made me check my privilege through her depiction of Richard.

“Days rolled into weeks. Weeks into months. And then at some point you realized you’d entered the future. The one you never planned on. The one where everything was going to be that much harder.”

“Every night, Kaprice watched the ten o’clock news. It was part of her preparation for the next day at school. If someone had gotten shot in Oakland, odds were that somebody at Oakland High School would be connected, affected, or implicated.”

I wouldn't say it's important for everyone to read The 57 Bus, more that it broadened my persepective since my experiences are so different from those of Sasha and Richard.

Nadine 

Must read for every young person and the adults and teachers in their lives. Powerful

Emily

"The proponents of hate-crime laws are liberals, and yet they are the ones who are the biggest critics of mass incarceration," observes James B. Jacobs, director of New York University's Center for Research in Crime and Justice, and an expert on hate-crime laws.

I admire the author of this book for so gallantly weaving two sides of a controversial issue together. From an enjoyment perspective, I would give this book 3 stars, nothing great, but nothing horrible. However, because of the controversy surrounding the topic that it deals with, I have to add an extra star to commend the author for not simply writing the book to cater to snowflakes, and to avoid ignorant attacks. 

Slater provides evidence behind each aspect that should be brought into consideration when discussing juvenile crimes, and does not let the nature of the victim cloud her judgement of just punishment. She brings law and reasoning into account and does not simply preach "justice" for the obvious victim while simultaneously promoting the demise of the perpetrator like many would. 

I am seriously impressed with the author's commentary on this case and would definitely be interested in reading some of her future works.

Jeni Enjaian

I started this book a few weeks ago, reading while my students read. This book is one of the last few books whose cover I had displayed on my wall but had not yet read.
I did not have any expectations for the book and found myself uncomfortably intrigued. Slater drew much of the narrative from highly researched sources, making the book nearly non-fiction.
The contrast between Sasha and Richard kept me engaged throughout the telling of the story. I will admit, however, that I felt much less engaged in Sasha's side of the story after the book had told Sasha's story initially and then also told Richard's story and the narrative had moved beyond the initial incident and healing phase.
I find this a fascinating book although I will not do a book talk on it for middle school students. If I ever taught high school, I would definitely discuss this book.

SnarkByThePage

I liked the concept of this book and the message is one that certainly warrants discussion, but the writing style made it hard for me to focus on those things.

Jennifer Crumbling

Asha Sidhu

amelia <3

Kjersti Pratt

Kayla Higginbotham

Arianna

Keira Walton 

Lisa Lindquist 

Abi Baker

Winner of the Stonewall Young Adult Literature Award One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both their lives forever. Two teenagers growing up in Oakland, California. One, Sasha, was born male but identifies as agender, wears skirts and attends a private school. The other, Richard, is an African American from a poor part of Oakland who attends a rough public school. They have no reason to meet, except for eight minutes every day, they catch the same bus home. And one day, messing about, Richard spies Sasha napping. He flicks the flame of his lighter to Sasha's skirt, and Sasha wakes up in a ball of flame. What happens next, as the victim, the perpetrator and the community struggle to come to terms with their sadness and shock, is a story of recovery, reconciliation, forgiveness and, above all, hope. It's about the power of being true to yourself, bravery and the good and bad in all of us. And, remarkably, it's all true.

The 57 Bus A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

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