About a year ago I received a call from a producer of Night Waves, a
BBC radio show/Web program. He wanted me to write about the Los Angeles
riot/uprising. He had been watching the clock; 10 years had passed and it
was time for us natives to reminisce. I almost felt insulted. A Brit had
to offer me money to remember one of the biggest events in the history of
one of the most important cities in the world. Why weren't we Los
Angelenos talking about it amongst ourselves? Were we that unnerved,
shell-shocked, that we buried the memories?
I don't think that Los Angeles much wants to remember one of the
largest and costliest civil disturbances in the history of the United
States. No, it's almost as though the city has some sort of amnesia, or
maybe it's fear; fear that what happened then could jump up and bite us
again.
But something frightening happened 10 years ago. We lived through it,
were scared and furious, considered bailing on Los Angeles, and feared
that this explosion of rage was just the precursor of more unrest. We
struggled with the realization that we were being written off by the rest
of the country; that Los Angeles was a flawed city from the get-go. Had we
finally collectively lost it, had a whole city gone tribal? We struggled
with the fragmented opinions of hows and whys; the city was too colored,
too poor, too vicious, too divided to pull itself back from the abyss of
the largest civil disturbance in the history of the United States.
But L.A. resurrected itself. We got along well enough for the economy
to blossom once again, and those that fled to greener or whiter climes
were replaced with browner or blacker or yellower faces, and the city
didn't miss a beat. It was still too large, too dangerous, too expensive,
too smoggy, but we weren't going anywhere.
This is home; a home that almost went up in flames. We need to
recollect that 10 years later, even if there will be no 10-part
documentary on PBS, or Tom Hanksbilled blockbuster re-creating with
searing realism the fires of '92. We can't watch the revolution in the
comfort of our home theaters; better to search our memories for those
jagged shards of experience and remember. LA
Novelist Jervey Tervalon is editor of Geography of Rage:
Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, which has just been released
by Really Great Books ($14.95). This essay is an excerpt from the book.
Several of the pieces throughout this package are also excerpts from Geography
of Rage. They include the stories by Pat Alderete, Lisa Alvarez, Teena
and Florentino Apeles, Gar Anthony Haywood, and Luis Paquime. On Tuesday,
the L.A. Central Library is hosting a panel discussion and reading of Geography
of Rage. See the Readings section of Calendar for more information.
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