The 57 bus by Dashka Slater tells the story of Sasha, who is a white high schooler in Oakland, California. He is not like the other “normal” students. Like other gender-non-conforming people, Sasha wants to be referred as ‘they.’ Sasha has a male body, but identifies them self as a agender, a person who does not identify their self as either a male or female. Throughout the book, Sasha faced many problems of discrimination, mostly because of their gender. One day, they decided to wear a skirt to school. When she was asleep on the 57 bus, a boy named Richard decided to do something that impacted hugely on both of their lives. Richard is a black teen that attended a large-public school in the crime-plagued flatlands. Using a lighter, Richard lit Sasha’s skirt on fire. As a result, unfortunately, Sasha was burned over 30% of her body and had to do multiple surgeries, and Richard had to be imprisoned for at least 5 years.  However, things changed..

This leads to my central idea:

As people are struggling through living with the gender that they identify themselves as, many other people are starting to accept and help with those differences.

I split the central idea into two parts; the struggles that LGBTQIA+ people face, and people are making a difference by helping those people. 

This page shows some quotes I found in the previous pages, which covers up some rather smaller problems, like going to the bathroom, that Sasha faced being a agender. Those small issues relate and form the big idea about discrimination. Even though people might not intentionally exclude people like Sasha, but it just happens through small things.

As I read on further in the book, the big problem began to float up. This page examines deeper about the cause and effect of the event that people are being discriminated and bullied because of their gender. People that believed they have a different gender are treated harshly, just like why Sasha was been lit on fire. However, some people are starting to accept Sasha and stand up for them.

In this page, I explored some feelings of Sasha when she had to act like a girl and when she told the therapist that they was a trans. It shows how Sasha was upset about those events how they felt.

On page 39, Sasha expressed how they had to act like a certain way so that people would treat you a certain way. They had to live in a gender that they felt they were not.

Furthermore, when Sasha was brave enough to tell their therapist that they were a transgender, the therapist felt that they didn’t understand what transgender meant. It was some time after Sasha finally decided to tell her friend about their gender after the therapist. Sasha did not expect her friend to understand them and feel thats not so important. This made Sasha feel better about their gender. (people are starting to accept them.)

Overall, this book was really enjoyable for me. Thank you for making it to the bottom of my notes!