The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

Dashka Slater

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Oct 17, 2017 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 305 pages

The riveting New York Times bestseller and Stonewall Book Award winner that will make you rethink all you know about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment. Artfully, compassionately, and expertly told, Dashka Slater's The 57 Bus is a must-read nonfiction book for teens that chronicles the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California.

Two ends of the same line. Two sides of the same crime.

If it weren’t for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a Black teen, lived in the economically challenged flatlands and attended a large public one.

Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But one afternoon on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned, and Richard charged with two hate crimes and facing life imprisonment. The case garnered international attention, thrusting both teenagers into the spotlight. But in The 57 Bus, award-winning journalist Dashka Slater shows that what might at first seem like a simple matter of right and wrong, justice and injustice, victim and criminal, is something more complicated—and far more heartbreaking.

Awards and Accolades for The 57 Bus:
A New York Times Bestseller
Stonewall Book Award Winner
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book Winner
A TIME Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Don’t miss Dashka Slater’s newest propulsive and thought-provoking nonfiction book, Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed, the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner which National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi hails as “powerful, timely, and delicately written.”

Contents

• Pronouns: 13
• Gran Turismo 2: 26
• Bathrooms: 40
• Dress Code: 53
• Book of Faces: 59
• The Best Mother Ever: 75
• Now Its a Good Day: 89
• Resolve: 102
• Watching: 117
• The Man with the Mustache: 119
• Knew My Baby: 132
• This Is Real: 146
• Charges: 160
• Life at Bothin: 176
• Lets All Take Care of Each Other: 187
• Skinned: 200
• Binary: 215
• Pretty: 229
• Not Wanting To: 242
• The People vs Richard: 243
• The Fine Print: 257
• Chad: 270
• Progress Report: 283
• Some GenderNeutrality Milestones: 297

About the author

Award-winning journalist Dashka Slater has written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Salon, and Mother Jones. Her New York Times-bestselling young-adult true crime narrative, The 57 Bus, has received numerous accolades, including the Stonewall Book Award, the California Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. It was a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist and an LA Times Book Award Finalist, in addition to receiving four starred reviews and being named to more than 20 separate lists of the year’s best books, including ones compiled by The Washington Post, the New York Public Library, and School Library Journal. In 2021, The 57 Bus was named to TIME magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. The author of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults, Dashka teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults program. She lives and writes in Oakland, California.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives; MSU Children's & YA Literature Collection
• Author: Dashka Slater
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2017
• ISBN: 0374303231, 9780374303235
• Length: 305 pages
• Subjects: JUVENILE NONFICTION / People & Places / United States / General; Juvenile Nonfiction / Law & Crime; Juvenile Nonfiction / Social Topics / Bullying; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General; YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION / LGBTQ; Young Adult Nonfiction / LGBTQ; Young Adult Nonfiction / Law & Crime; Young Adult Nonfiction / Social Topics / Class Differences