Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles 1992

Rough Draft Essay #3 When the LA riots happened many thought it was a race difference between African Americans and White Americans, but it was much more than that. Anna Deavere Smith’s book Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, shows the different races involved in the LA riots and the true feelings of the LA riots from a range of different people. After interviewing over 300 people, Smith included 25 people. People who have dealt with racism, witnesses of the riots, Korean store owners, police officers and more. Touching on many different painful subjectsAnna Deavere Smith’s book Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 achieves her goal of instilling change by successfully raising awareness of social injustice and expressing the resentment from the civilians

Young-Soon Han a former liquor store owner feels very left out of the justice system. She feels upset about how African Americans got their justice, she says “They finally found that justice exists in this society. Then where is the victim’s rights? They got their rights by destroying innocent Korean merchants” (Smith 247). The reason Smith uses Mrs. Young-Soon Han is because she feels that she did not get justice after the riots. As a resident of Los Angeles she feels as though there is injustice in her community. In an Los Angeles Times article by Seth Mydans, he focuses on the Korean aspect of the LA riots and says “In the South-Central area, where Korean shops have become the object of resentment even as they provide what is often the only retail service to residents” (Mydans). Mydans is saying that even though the Korean shops are the only retail and service offered to South Central citizens, the store owners felt victimized. Mydans explains that during the riots Korean shops became the main focus of violence because many rioters felt resentment towards the Korean stores. Dean Gilmour, Lieutenant of the Los Angeles County Coroner is in charge of recording the total deaths in LA, after going through the numbers, he says “Are all gang shootings during this time riot-related? I mean, we have gang shootings every day of the year” (Smith 191). Smith uses Gilmore’s passage because he is showing the realization of the violence in South Central. Gilmore concludes that

The book speaks to many people because of all the different voices, and Anna Deavere Smith leaves the interviews open. Smith does a superb job of not criticizing her interviews and this achieves her goal of instilling change. Smith does not sugarcoat her book, every word in the interviews are from those people. Smith leaves her interviews open, it let’s the reader connect with the story. Throughout the book there are some interviews that could question the truth of what really happened during the riots. Even though they are questionable, Smith does not put in her input, she leaves it up to the