Dashka Slater, will be guiding you into the true story of a crime on the 57 bus. This book will explain in details of gender inequality, racism, protesting, and the laws. The theme of this book is, peoples life can change in a matter of time. A non-confirming gender or agender teenager called Sasha, meaning they are not female or male which is why we use the pronouns of they, them, or their. Sasha was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when she was just 7 years old. Asperger syndrome is a type of autism when they discover something, they like they will be studying it, wearing it, etc. Sasha always struggled with people calling them a ‘he’ even after identifying as agender for over a year. Then another teenage boy named Richard who set Sasha’s skirt on fire. Richard was a typical teenage boy who liked joking around, but on November 4th, 2013 everything changed for both characters, their friends, family, and the world.

 

Sasha did everything they could for people to use the proper pronouns so that people can respect others. People around her were basically all implicit bias. They only knew male or female. While Sasha’s dad Karl who is actually a transgender think that it was brilliant that Sasha is so strict about pronouns was because he thought Sasha will have a voice. Since they were always shy. On the other hand, Debbie their mom struggled a bit since she only looked on the bad side of what might happen in public.

 

Which connects to the Monday of November 4th, 2013. Sasha always went on the 57 bus to go home after school, but that they she wore a skirt and fell straight asleep. “Think about it, they woke up and they were on fire,” Healy said in page 173 Slater.  Richard was arrested, charged, and convicted of the crime. Today he is already out of jail since he was released out of Alameda County juvenile Hall, right before his 21st birthday.

 

Finally, as some of our parents may say… good things happen after the bad. So Sasha went to MIT and the world started being more their way. Nepal, Australia, Denmark, Germany, etc started giving more choices to those non-confirming genders.

 

In my opinion, I would definitely recommend to those who like to learn about society or even if you just like reading nonfiction/realist nonfiction. From my point of view I find this story even more fascinating because the author took more than a year to write this true story. By using news, her team to research, Bill Du Bois (lawyer for Richard in the courts), staff and students at Maybeck high school, The New York Times Magazine (the pictures from my video were also from them), and LOTS. I rate this book a 4 out of 5 because some parts were quite challenging when it was talking about the laws.

Reflection:

In this unit I learned to think ‘do i need to reread this part?’ As well as taking notes in different ways, looking at the different perspectives, and to look at the issues of the book.