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Author's Note–How Do You Know What Gender You Are?

Summary: Author’s Note

The story presented in The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their Lives is true; only names have been changed. Interviews have been represented verbatim whenever possible.

Summary: Monday, November 4, 2013

At 4:30 p.m., Sasha and Richard, ride the 57 bus across Oakland. Sasha, a senior at a small private school who identifies as agender (neither male nor female), falls asleep at the back of the bus after reading a book for class. Richard, a junior at Oakland High School, flicks a lighter at Sasha’s gauzy skirt.

The narrator presents the following events as though they have not happened yet: In a moment, Sasha will wake up screaming with second- and third-degree burns. Sasha will spend more than three weeks in San Francisco undergoing multiple surgeries. Richard will be arrested the following day and charged with two felonies, both modified to hate-crimes. He will be tried as an adult, with a possible lifetime prison sentence.
The narrator states that there must be some way to wake Sasha, stop Richard, or get the driver to pull over; there must be something that the reader can do.

Summary: Oakland, California

Oakland, California has a population of more than 400,000 that is highly diverse, both ethnically and socioeconomically. The city has a significant number of gay- and lesbian-headed households, and more lesbian couples per capita than any other city in the United States. In 2013, when Sasha is burned, Oakland has the nation’s second-highest per-capita crime rate and ranks seventh-highest in income inequality. 

The bulk of the city’s murders happen in East Oakland, where Richard lives. The schools there are more run-down than elsewhere, and there are more liquor stores and fewer grocery stores. The 57 bus travels eleven miles from one end of the city to the other, through all kinds of neighborhoods. Each afternoon, Sasha and Richard spent eight minutes together on the bus, and if not for the 57 bus, they might never have met one another.

PART 1: SASHA

Summary: Tumbling

Answers to a survey adapted from Sasha’s Tumblr page. Likes: bok choy, cats, cuttlefish, hats, compliments, and parties. Dislikes: compliments and parties. Things worth ranting about: gender, wealth inequality, and why school is important. There is also a list of fanciful items that would make good potential presents for Sasha, including: a brass airship, a Victorian house on wheels, tights painted like a mermaid tail, and a dress painted like a nebula.

Summary: Pronouns

Sasha has been interested in languages from a young age, reading independently by four and starting to create a new, fictitious language, called Astrolinguish, by age six. As a senior in high school, Sasha develops a language based on agricultural society, where a pronoun does not reflect the gender of the corresponding noun but, instead, the noun’s animate or inanimate status.

The author points out that, unlike English, many languages have gender-neutral pronouns. As a gender-nonconformist, Sasha prefers the pronoun they.

Summary: 1001 Blank White Cards

Sasha has previously been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which often makes people socially awkward. Sasha’s passion for communist Russia, games, live-action role-playing, and a local ska-pop-punk band often help Sasha overcome issues with shyness and social interactivity. 

Sasha attends Maybeck, a small private school that welcomes students who were bullied elsewhere. At school, Sasha has a small group of friends: Healy, Ian, Michael, and Michael’s girlfriend Teah. They are the “nerdy” kids who love playing games. One of the group’s favorite games is 1001 Blank White Cards, which Sasha and Michael learned from a senior as freshmen. The group all wrote silly rules on index cards, such as requiring someone to speak with a lisp or accent, or to sing a specific song, or else lose their turn. More cards were regularly added to the stack. In the beginning, when most of the cards were still blank, Sasha was called Luke and used the pronoun he.

Summary: Luke and Samantha

In sixth grade, Sasha attended a Montessori school and became close friends with Samantha. They were both very intelligent and had similar interests and the same sense of humor. Fellow students regularly teased them for spending so much time together, seeing Sasha as a boy and Samantha as a girl. When Samantha hit puberty, she became increasingly uncomfortable with her body and with the expectations associated with being a teenage girl. After Samantha told her class that she was angry, sad, afraid, and wanted to die, she was referred to a therapist. When Samantha told the therapist that she thought she might be transgender, the therapist told Samantha might not know what transgender means.

Summary: Gran Turismo 2

A year later, while playing video games, Samantha tells Sasha that she has something important to tell them. After Samantha says that she is transgender, Sasha replies that Samantha should use whatever word represents how she feels. Within five years, Samantha transitioned to Andrew and the conversation was one of the most validating of Andrew’s life.

Summary: How Do You Know What Gender You Are?

In 2012, after Sasha asks Andrew how he realized that he was male, Andrew tells them that he just knew. Sasha poses a similar question to their father, Karl, who gives a similar answer. Sasha realizes that they do not have a core feeling of gender, one way or the other. After some thought and online discussion, Sasha tells their parents that they are genderqueer (not identifying as masculine or feminine). At the time, Sasha’s parents accept this but do not fully understand it right away.

Analysis: Author's Note–How Do You Know What Gender You Are?

The first chapter of the book introduces the unique style the narrator will use to describe what happened on the 57 bus and bring the audience into the story. Unusually, the events are not presented in a straightforward narrative; instead, the narrator weaves together many different elements. In some places, she describes events in an objective narrative. In other chapters, she includes descriptions of the subjects’ social media pages, comments from friends and relatives of Sasha and Richard, descriptions of the city of Oakland and its inequalities, and discussions of the English language. The fact that the narrator includes all of this information allows the audience to understand the larger world beyond the incident on the bus and helps them see what brought both Sasha and Richard to that moment in time. Additionally, the book begins with a description of the incident that sets the central conflict: Richard lights Sasha’s skirt on fire. Instead of leading up to this moment, the narrator presents it right away, thereby changing the question in the book from what happens to why it happens. The narrator even writes in the second person, as if the audience is present on the bus and has the power to change events. This style invites the audience to participate in the story and draw conclusions about the people and events as the book presents them.

In Part 1, the descriptions of Sasha and of Oakland explore the overall theme of binaries. The book questions whether or not these binaries can be reconciled. As an agender person, Sasha grew up in a world in which gender binaries were a typical form of classification. The narrator describes how this binary is intrinsic to the English language. Sasha’s interest in other languages, however, showed them that there are other ways of seeing the world, and they reflected this in the language they created by using pronouns distinguishing between animate and inanimate objects instead of between male and female. As they grow older, Sasha and their friends begin to see that binary depictions of gender do not work for their understandings of their own gender, and they look for ways to reconcile them. Beyond the gender binaries, Richard and Sasha live in a world of binaries within their city. Sasha inhabits a middle-class world. Richard, on the other hand, lives in a neighborhood affected by income inequality and violent crime. When the different areas come together, as in the incident between Sasha and Richard, the results are destructive.

This section also illustrates the book’s motif of perception. The “Sasha” chapter opens with Sasha’s Tumblr page, which is a depiction of Sasha created by Sasha, designed to be public, to shape and affirm their identity in the eyes of others. Later, when Sasha speaks to their parents about being genderqueer, they post about it online as well, further allowing them to explore and define their identity. In the “Luke and Samantha” chapter, the narrator describes a period in middle school during which Sasha’s friend Andrew (then known as Samantha) is upset that others in their school believe that he and Sasha (then going by the name Luke) might be dating. Clearly, public perception is a major source of worry and concern. A year later, these worries reappear when Andrew tells Sasha he might be transgender. Though the therapist had received this idea badly, Sasha doesn’t mind at all, nor do they think it matters. This affirming perception gives Andrew the strength and courage to begin exploring his identity, to change his name and begin using he/him pronouns. Though unspoken in this section, one may also wonder how Richard’s perception of Sasha affects the crime. Did Richard feel freer to attack Sasha because he perceived them as different for wearing a skirt? The book shows that other people’s perceptions, and the lens through which one is viewed, can be validating but also dangerous.

Next section Genderqueer–Sasha and Nemo

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