The 57 Bus, Dashka Slater
The 57 Bus, Dashka Slater
2 Rating(s)
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

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

Author: Dashka Slater

Narrator: Robin Miles

Unabridged: 5 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/17/2017


Synopsis

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.

A New York Times Bestseller • Stonewall Book Award Winner • YALSA Award forExcellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist • A Boston Globe–Horn BookNonfiction Honor Book Winner • A TIME Magazine Best YA Book of All Time •A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

About Dashka Slater

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Hannah on September 06, 2017

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend. In November of 2013 in Oakland, California, an agender teenager riding the 57 bus was set on fire. In an instant – with a flicker of flame and a reckless lapse in judgement – the lives of two teenagers were......more

Goodreads review by Kathryn on September 08, 2017

I rarely read YA non-fiction, but I made an exception for Dashka Slater’s The 57 Bus. As a librarian, I’ve been searching for ways to address social justice topics. While it’s liberal, my home state is predominantly white. Fortunately as a child I lived abroad, so I had exposure to diverse groups of......more

Goodreads review by Suz on July 11, 2024

Small books really do deliver strongly, this is one of those. I was not aware of this true story, an event taking place at the end of 2013. What struck me in this awful situation, and I’m sure as it did the rest of the world, was the forgiveness and lack of hatred, when the expected outcomes could ha......more

Goodreads review by Linda on July 26, 2021

On November 4, 2013, Richard Thomas, age 16, set 18-year-old Sasha Fleishman's clothing on fire during his ride home from school on the 57 bus. Both Sasha and Richard lived in Oakland, California, one of the US's most diverse and unequal cities. Sasha, a white middle-class youth, was diagnosed with......more

Goodreads review by Karen on December 19, 2023

In the fall of 2013, on a bus ride home, a young man sets another student on fire. With a journalist’s eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable d......more