Rising from the Ashes
Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books of the Year
Award-winning author Paula Yoo delivers "a comprehensive, kaleidoscopic account of what happened before, during, and after the 1992 Los Angeles uprising" (Horn Book Magazine, starred review).
In the spring of 1992, after a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged in the brutal beating of a Black man, Rodney King, Los Angeles was torn apart. Thousands of fires were set, causing more than a billion dollars in damage. In neighborhoods abandoned by the police, protestors and storeowners exchanged gunfire. More than 12,000 people were arrested and 2,400 injured. Sixty-three died.
In Rising from the Ashes, award-winning author Paula Yoo draws on the experience of the city’s Korean American community to narrate and illuminate this uprising, from the racism that created economically disadvantaged neighborhoods torn by drugs and gang-related violence, to the tensions between the city’s minority communities. At its heart are the stories of three lives and three families: those of Rodney King; of Latasha Harlins, a Black teenager shot and killed by a Korean American storeowner; and Edward Jae Song Lee, a Korean American man killed in the unrest. Woven throughout, and set against a minute-by-minute account of the uprising, are the voices of dozens others: police officers, firefighters, journalists, business owners, and activists whose recollections give texture and perspective to the events of those five days in 1992 and their impact over the years that followed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Via vivid prose, Yoo (From a Whisper to a Rally) depicts the events surrounding the acquittal of the four white police officers who brutalized Black motorist Rodney King in 1992 L.A. By centering the violent attempted arrest of Black 21-year-old Marquette Frye in 1965, the author contextualizes the history of the LAPD's racist policing and emphasizes how incidents such as King's were not isolated. King's case, along with the 1991 killing of Black 14-year-old Latasha Harlins, had far-reaching implications that would impact L.A.'s Black and Korean communities and led to the death of Korean 18-year-old Edward Jae Song Lee during the 1992 L.A. Riots. Tensions between the communities are equitably highlighted as Yoo outlines the system that still denies both groups basic rights by recounting details from King, Harlins, and Song Lee's lives. Moments of solidarity are peppered throughout, as when Black residents protect a Korean-owned music stall from destruction amid societal unrest. Yoo's message of empathy, progress, and resilience following tragedy prove resonant in this moving account that remains relevant to contemporary society, in which smartphones have replaced camcorders in individuals' quest to expose police brutality and systemic racism. Includes abundant back matter. Ages 12–up.
