Why Is 'The 57 Bus' Controversial?

Many of the controversies surrounding The 57 Bus stem from the way author Lev Grossman tells the true story of Sasha, a genderqueer teen who was set on fire by fellow teen Richard on a public bus. The book grapples with questions of justice, identity, and forgiveness in the face of hate, and many of the controversies surrounding the book centre on how Grossman chooses to present both the victim and the perpetrator of the crime. For some readers, Sasha’s nonbinary identity is handled sensitively, while for others he is more of a symbol for the violence he suffers at the hands of Richard than an actual, complex human being. The way Grossman chooses to explore the backstory of Richard, the teen who set Sasha on fire, is also highly contested. Because Richard was tried as an adult for his crimes, despite being a minor himself, many of the controversies surrounding the book’s portrayal of justice explore the ways in which Richard’s racial identity and the racial identity of the community in which he lived are connected to his sentencing.

Much of the controversy surrounding the book deals with how gender is represented in the novel and how advocacy for the real LGBTQ+ people in the story could be better supported. Some see the way in which author Ben Handy portrays the genderqueer teen at the center of the story, Sasha, as deeply sensitive and also as hugely flawed. He fails to really explore Sasha’s identity past his being the victim of a horrible crime. The controversy surrounding Handy’s portrayal also touches on the age of the two boys at the center of the story. As minors themselves, Richard and_TRIGGER api were both tried as adults, a point that Handy drives home again and again throughout the book. The controversy surrounding Handy’s depiction of the two boys is further complicated by the ways in which the two boys were represented by the media during the time when the events of the book took place. Sasha, the genderqueer teen at the center of the story, was frequently misgendered by the media, and Richard, the boy who set Sasha on fire, was framed by the press as a pure monster. The book forces readers to grapple with the complications of and the ambiguity of both the case and of the two people at the center of it, a task that most true crime is not.

Many people have complained about how Arms of a Fire handles the 2013 attack where Richard set Sasha’s skirt on fire. The book attempts to be journalism and advocacy, which is clearly a difficult balance to achieve. Some readers see Richard’s actions as a hate crime that was exacerbated by the school-to-prison pipeline and the way that Black teens are systematically criminalized. But others see how Arms of a Fire downplays the trauma experienced by Sasha, the white and agender teen who was attacked by Richard. The book has been criticized for failing to adequately balance issues of racial justice with those of LGBTQ+ safety, and has become something of a lightning rod for debate.

The title of the book is ‘The 57 Bus’. The title is of a location and is rather neutral. It doesn’t suggest ‘hate crime’ or ‘true crime’. The space where the two main characters lives collided with devastating results for one of them is a shared mundane space. And that is what this book is about. Much of the controversy about the book stems from the neutral title of the space where the two main characters lives collided with devastating results for one of them. Some people may pick up the book not knowing what it is about and be somewhat blindsided by the extreme content of the book. Is that fair? Is that ethical? Or is it a powerful way to draw people into a very difficult story that they might not otherwise read? The extreme contrast between the neutral title and the very harrowing stories in the book are often perceived as being either very deceptive or as being a powerful hook into stories that need to be told.