92 pages • 3 hours read
Dashka SlaterThe 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their Lives (2017)
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Slater breaks from traditional narrative nonfiction in the way she structures this book. By using short vignettes, often without context or commentary, Slater is reflecting the fragmentary nature of teenage life and the haphazard way that Richard and Sasha’s lives intersected. Slater challenges the reader to make meaning from her headings and the juxtaposition of certain texts with others; by splitting the book into four parts, she has also marked those four things as being distinct and separate, even as they come together.
Slater chooses to present some of the story in the form of poems—mostly ones she has assembled from quotations or social media. Some of these poems are on difficult topics, such as “Trust Issues,” and Slater uses poetry to both soften and increase the impact of the text. Poems are artful and stylized, turning everyday moments into something bigger. “Say they got your back / as they get their knives out” (101) sums up Richard’s fears of his peers elegantly and simply, even beautifully.
Other sections quote directly from official documents, introducing the reader to the cold, black and white language of bureaucracy without commentary from the author. Using source materials like this without comment brings the reader in closer to the story, inviting them to experience the text the way the people in the narrative do. Slater also presents statistics in the same way, without comment, suggesting the numbers stand alone in what they say about the world. The last lines of the book are simply, “Percentage of confined youths who have attempted suicide: 22” (302), a simple piece of data presented alone for the reader to decide what to make of it.
Slater’s nontraditional narrative requires work from the reader, to make inferences and draw conclusions. She uses it to signal respect for her audience and to reinforce her point that the meaning of an event is in the eye of the beholder. Even still, this makes her somewhat of an unreliable narrator in that it isn’t always clear why she is presenting certain information, and the work the reader does to make that determination is left entirely to that person. Slater gives her reader the choice to control/make meaning of the narrative, surrendering authorial control in a way that reflect a central question of the text, whether the violence at the heart of the story makes perfect sense or no sense at all.
Language
Slater makes much of how the language we speak colors our view of the world—the words we use to describe that world are, by necessity, the words we have available to us. Changes in language or nontraditional usage can be difficult, especially when those changes require us to change the way we view something. For Debbie and Karl, dropping the binary distinction “she/he” in favor of “they” means also giving up the notion of “son” or “daughter”—they no longer have access to those words, just “child.”
A person’s ability to use language is also important to this story. Richard gets tripped up by using the word “homophobic,” a word he may not actually understand but which is key to having hate crimes added to his charges, which is what gets him charged as an adult.
The type of language we speak is a reflection of the world in which we live—the people and culture we interact with. Sasha and their peers have access to all manner of words to express their feelings and their thoughts; Richard and his peers are more limited in the ways they can use language to communicate effectively with a larger audience. Mastery of language is a privilege; it gives a person power, or it weakens their ability to navigate a world that prioritizes fluency.
Sasha’s Skirts
Sasha begins to wear skirts almost on a whim, simply finding them comfortable and available via hand-me-downs from a friend. It’s because Sasha is wearing a skirt that Richard lights it on fire; students at Sasha’s high school organize a skirt-day in support of them while they’re in the hospital. Skirts are traditionally identified as women’s wear, and Slater makes mention of how Sasha’s mother, Debbie, had once to protest to be able to wear pants. Skirts have been symbols of femininity, sexuality, repression, oppression, and more—Sasha’s decision to wear them initially represents a carefree choice, that anyone can wear whatever they want, until that decision provokes unwanted attention that leads to violence. Debbie had always feared this would happen; Sasha had been blithe about it. Their conflicting perspectives on what it meant for a person to wear a skirt are representative of their generational experiences; the violence Sasha experiences because of wearing a skirt is a consequence as old as time.
Skeet’s Death
Skeet’s death is a turning point for Richard. Skeet is a foil for Richard: they have similar extroverted, goofy personalities, and are both sent to group homes after their arrest. The options from there are redemption or a further retreat into crime: Skeet chooses the latter, running away from the group home, and he ends up dead just a month later. The friend group feels guilty over Skeet’s death, Cherie saying “if we’d never got into that fight, maybe Skeet would still be alive” (91).
Because Richard mourns Skeet alone from the distance of his own group home, Slater suggests that he has trouble putting Skeet’s death into perspective—he begins to embrace a nihilistic worldview, no longer believing there is an “out” possible for him or his friends. While being interviewed after his arrest, Richard brings up Skeet’s death as a landmark/milestone in his life. It’s possible Richard has come to believe that he and his friends are all doomed to the violence Slater describes as “like the fog that swept in from San Francisco […] [e]ven in the bright sunshine, you know it could roll in at any minute and chill you to the bone” (95).
