Fires House Arrest: Play Analysis

Anna Deavere Smith is a very talented woman; she’s a playwright, a journalist, author, and an actress. She focuses mainly on social issues particularly ones with race. Within the plays/books, Twilight Los Angeles 1992, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, and House Arrest, the race issues she talks about relates to recent events. In this paper, I will do my best to compare and contrast the books and the issues within them. I will also be discussing about how I feel about certain parts within these plays, each play, and them all together.

The play Twilight Los Angeles 1992 theme was about Rodney King’s shooting which then lead into the killing of Walter Park. This theme guides us into thinking about the injustice

Okay, Black people probably believe they won by the trial?… They got their rights. BY destroying innocent Korean merchants… They destroyed innocent people. And I wonder if that is really justice to get their rights this way.” (pg. 246-247) This was one of the most defining points for me within this book. It brings up several points, which I had not thought of. Why were Koreans left out of the qualification medical treatment, food stamps, GR, welfare, or any help? Why are Koreans forced to work and are high tax payers and still don’t qualify for benefits? I mean, I guess that’ll become clearer as I learn more about the government, laws, and rights of minorities. Another good interview to me was Limbo/Twilight #2. I like how he tells us about where his name came from, and how it makes since to him, which helped me connect him to the play, “a lot a people said, “Well, Twilight, you know, you a lot smarter and you have a lot more wisdom then those twice your age.” I was at home writing one night and I was writing my name and I just looked at it and it came ta me: “twi,” abbreviation of the word “twice”.. You have the last word, “light.” “Light” is a word that symbolizes knowledge, knowing, wisdom, within the Koran and the Holy Bible. Twilight. I have twice the knowledge of those my age, twice the understanding of those my age. So twilight is that

First off, the Jew ambulance leaving little children there on the ground was a BIG mental problem with me. As a trained and certified professional, aren’t they suppose to help anyone in need? No matter the color of their skin. Aren’t they suppose to help the ones they are equipped to save? No, for some religious reason. Then as a human being with a heart, don’t they care enough to help the children? The innocent children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time! Or what about the fact the police did not get every eye witness’s point of view? Is that just something they ignored? Another point of an unjust justice system. However, another red flag is the fact that an innocent Australian Yankel Rosenbaum was viciously stabbed by black youths in revenge of Gavin Cato. Do people not think? Do people understand that they cannot go around hurting people because something tragic happens? Do people just not understand that if you just MUST have revenge, you have to get the person who CAUSED the pain? Does it not occur to people that killing someone that is not related to the crime is just a pointless murder? The last thing I will be discussing in this paper is the funerals. I do not understand how nothing was done or said to the family of Yankel Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum was pretty much in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like Gavin Cato. Now Gavin Cato’s funeral honestly made me mad and disgusted. “I am not