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A review by jocelynmaae
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater
2.0
“Two tongues in their mouths, the one they use to promise and the one they use to lie.”
I want to preface by saying that I’m not giving this book a low rating because I’m a homophobic transphobic individual like most of the other low review on this book. My issue lies with the author.
1. She didn’t know GNC people existed before writing this book
2. She’s a cis, straight woman (in the context of this book it feels misinformed)
3. She wrote an article that was overall very transphobic (she didn’t use Sasha’s pronouns after writing a whole book about it)
4. She often refers to Sasha as “a boy in a skirt” which is a whole new level of wrong
All of these rub me the wrong way and make me feel like the source in general is untrustworthy. Like reading a book on racial discrimination written by a white person, it just doesn’t make sense. If the book was written by a trans person or someone GNC then this book would have so much potential not just as a book but within the writing as a whole, it would have much more of an effect on the readers. There would be more emphasis on the emotional aspects.
THEN FOR FUCKS SAKE, SASHA IS A FUCKING HUMAN BEING, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TALK ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN HOW THEY IDENTIFY. We got so little about who Sasha is as a person, we go so incredibly little information about their personality. And I get it, the book wasn’t about their life it was about the incident on the 57 bus. But again, bringing us back to the emotional aspects of the story! If you want the reader to be impacted by a novel, you have to make the characters (or in this case real people) seem like real fucking people. I feel like that was only achieved on Richard’s side (I wonder why that is).
I think this book could have easily been co-authored by a NGC person to tell Sasha’s side and background, and then by Slater for Richard’s part.
I want to preface by saying that I’m not giving this book a low rating because I’m a homophobic transphobic individual like most of the other low review on this book. My issue lies with the author.
1. She didn’t know GNC people existed before writing this book
2. She’s a cis, straight woman (in the context of this book it feels misinformed)
3. She wrote an article that was overall very transphobic (she didn’t use Sasha’s pronouns after writing a whole book about it)
4. She often refers to Sasha as “a boy in a skirt” which is a whole new level of wrong
All of these rub me the wrong way and make me feel like the source in general is untrustworthy. Like reading a book on racial discrimination written by a white person, it just doesn’t make sense. If the book was written by a trans person or someone GNC then this book would have so much potential not just as a book but within the writing as a whole, it would have much more of an effect on the readers. There would be more emphasis on the emotional aspects.
THEN FOR FUCKS SAKE, SASHA IS A FUCKING HUMAN BEING, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TALK ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN HOW THEY IDENTIFY. We got so little about who Sasha is as a person, we go so incredibly little information about their personality. And I get it, the book wasn’t about their life it was about the incident on the 57 bus. But again, bringing us back to the emotional aspects of the story! If you want the reader to be impacted by a novel, you have to make the characters (or in this case real people) seem like real fucking people. I feel like that was only achieved on Richard’s side (I wonder why that is).
I think this book could have easily been co-authored by a NGC person to tell Sasha’s side and background, and then by Slater for Richard’s part.