“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus, Nobel Prize-winning philosopher
During this quarantine, with all this COVID-19 I have been a little worried, bored and I feel like I should try to do something new, so here I am, writing my first summary about a book, and the book I am going to talk about is 57 Bus. But before this I want to make something clear, I know that people everywhere say that you have to be productive, do new things, take care of yourself, among other things and I'm trying, but also I know that for many other people it hasn't been easy at all, and it's okay, if you can't do new things or just don't want to, it’s fine, we are all experiencing it in different ways.
As you know, for all the students, the school is closed and we started doing online classes. Personally, it helped me a lot to see the importance of school in general. For my humanities class, they made a book club, each one decided which book they and I want to read and after each week I will meet the same people who are reading the same book as me. And for the same class we had another job, which is this one you are reading, is to write for two weeks for 30 minutes a day and then read everything we write and choose one or more to make a big piece of writing, during this difficult time I realized how much I like to write and read, and having this possibility is something very special for me.
Today I am going to talk about the book 57 bus by Dashka Slater, a story based on real events. To me, it’s very impressive. Check out the news clip of the real-life story.
This book tells the story of Sasha who is white teenager, agender and neutral meaning they do not feel like neither woman nor man. This book is made for the teenage audience, and the author's purpose was for teenagers to understand each of the characters and see some problems in the society in which they live.
“It seemed clear to me that teenagers would find the characters compelling and I wanted them to have a chance to grapple with the complex issues the story raises: issues about either/or narratives, about race, gender, class, justice and forgiveness.”
— Dashka Slater, author
The truth is that I have not finished reading it, but what I have read I liked very much because the book makes me feel different emotions and has taught me different things. In the first pages we can see a bit of Sasha's history, before the problem will unravel. There is one detail that we have to understand: Sasha used the pronoun they and before that Sasha was called Luke. At first I asked myself: “Who is Luke,?” I was super confused but as I continued reading I realized that they were the same person. I thought that Sasha was a girl which I know is wrong because it is a stereotype in names and I think that the author herself wants us to learn from her book to stop using stereotypes and stop believing that there is only the binary gender: male and female.
The other very important character is Richard, a black male teenager who is surrounded by people who loved him or at one point hurt him. He went through many deaths of loved ones, this was something that marked him a lot. His friends and the book describe him as a good person, very funny, kind, but sometimes he was influenced by his friends, leading him to do things that maybe they are not the best.
But what is the conflict in this book? Everything is based on a day that Sasha was riding quietly on bus number 57. They were asleep while their friend was with them too, so three teenagers around 16-17 years old approached Sasha playing and they began to talk to them and annoy them, but they did not listen and they were still asleep. One of the three teenagers began to see that they were ignoring him and got mad and said to another of his friends "do it, do it now.” And one of them set Sasha's skirt on fire. What they didn't think was that the fire would spread so fast in their clothes that they would cause third degree burns on 25 percent of Sasha’s body. They were hospitalized. The other teen went to trial, but since they wanted to give him a trial treating him as an adult, it caused many more problems on social media since some agreed and others did not, apart from that people were giving that teenager a lot of hate.
But maybe you’re asking who can do that thing and why?? Well The person who set Sasha on fire is ………. I can't tell you who it is because the magic of the story would be lost. You will have to read the book to know it, and also to know other things like, what happened to the other two boys? What happened to the person who set them on fire? How is Sasha and what consequences did this accident have?
But what I can tell you is that things I liked during the book, what I liked from the pages is that they teach you many things. The pages not only have the story, but they leave you some teaching — for example as we know that all people are different, different tastes in music, different sexual preferences and each have their own gender, and that's why “we always have to adopt the language that people use to call themselves” as the book says. Among the beautiful pages of this book you can find many definitions:
¨Terms for Gender and Sex¨:
Agender:¨Doesn't identify as any gender.¨
Androgynous:¨Identifies as third gender that blends male female characteristics¨
Bigender:¨Sometimes identifies as male and sometimes as female.¨
Cisgender:¨The opposite of transgender; gender matches their birth sex.¨
Gender Questioning:¨Is unsure about where they belong on the gender spectrum.¨
Genderqueer:¨Gender identity doesn’t fit neatly into male/female categories.¨
Intersex:¨Born with sexual anatomy, organs, or chromosomes that don’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. Replaces the outdated and offensive term hermaphrodite.¨
Transgender:¨Feels their gender is different from their birth sex, whether or not they have physically changed their body or outward presentation. A transgender man is someone who currently identifies as male. A transgender woman is someone who currently identifies as female.¨
¨Terms for Sexuality¨
Asexual:¨Not physically attracted to anyone.¨
Bisexual:¨Physically attracted to both men and women.¨
Cupiosexual:¨Doesn’t feel sexual attraction, but is still interested in sex.¨
Graysexual:¨Mostly doesn’t feel sexual attraction but does occasionally.¨
Heterosexual:¨Physically attracted to people of the opposite gender.¨
Homosexual:¨Physically attracted to people of the same gender.¨
Pansexual:¨Physically attracted to people across the gender spectrum.¨
¨Terms for Romantic Inclination¨
Aromantic:¨Not romantically attracted to anyone.¨
Biromantic:¨Romantically attracted to both men and women.¨
Cupioromantic:¨Doesn’t feel romantic attraction, but is still interested in romance.¨
Heteroromantic:¨Romantically attracted to people of the opposite gender.¨
Homoromantic: Romantically attracted to people of the same gender.¨
Panromantic:¨Romantically attracted to people across the gender spectrum.¨
Quoiromantic:¨Doesn’t understand the difference between romantic and Platonic love.¨
Among other definitions that make you understand the book perfectly, the pages make you fall in love with reading, wanting to read more and more every time
¨Reading is like breathing in; writing is like breathing out¨
—Pam Allyn
So a piece of advice that I give you is that in this difficult time when we have so much free time and sometimes we are only thinking about things that don’t clear your mind, become active, not only physically but mentally allowing your mind to imagine. I invite you to write your ideas, comments and questions you have about the books that you read every time and I promise it’s going to be the best thing ever. The last thing I want to say is, as the book 57 bus says is each person in this world is so different from each other and it doesn't matter, because every little thing that we have makes us who we are now and we always have to respect each other no matter what.