Critic's Notebook: Literature of 1992 L.A. riots is fragmented

Los Angeles Times/LATimes.com ^ | April 22, 2012 | By David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic

[thecodont]

One of my favorite pieces of writing to emerge from the 1992 Los Angeles riots is a poem by a writer named Nicole Sampogna, called "Another L.A." In it, the poet traces the odd dislocation of living on the Westside while so much of the city burns. "They send us home early, again," she begins, "supposedly for curfew sake, / but I know it's to beat the traffic." And then: "over there the smoke rises, / horns blare, streets scream, / shoot, loot, / bash windows, bash heads, / lights out / knocked out / by a black & white with a baton. / but, here / will the pizza man deliver after sunset?"

[...]

How in such a place do we evoke the larger story? How do we find common ground?

[...]

No equivalent sense of history emerges when we think about 1992. Instead, we are left with fragments, snapshots, the loose tiles of what former Mayor Tom Bradley liked to call "the glorious mosaic," which the riots revealed to be a lie. That's true even of King's memoir "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption" (HarperOne: 245 pp., $25.99), which seeks to capitalize on the 20th anniversary of the riots but never offers a coherent point of view. It's unfair, perhaps, to expect this of King, who was thrust, or thrust himself, into a situation beyond his control. Nonetheless, it's also emblematic of the vagaries, the displacement, the lack of a collective vision, our inability even now to take a broad, inclusive perspective on the riots and what they mean.

[...]

...Either way, I keep coming back to Sampogna, to Coleman, George and Rayner, and their sense of "our (dis)connection," of the riots as a story we have never quite known how to tell.

[AppyPappy]

My brother lived in LA and he said the local street gang kept the looters out so they could do the looting themselves.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Oh, I got better stories than that. About a mile away was a gun store. When the S started to HTF, the owner called in all his employees. They armed up, posting guys on the roof with shotguns and bandeliers of shells. Some gang guys came by and told hem to walk away, but they refused. The gang guys stayed away. The best part of his, though, was that the liquor store next door in the little strip mall was also untouched and was the only place you could buy beer on Friday. And on Friday, you NEEDED a beer.

[Carriage Hill]

At least, a beer, BH-T! At least...

[Bon of Babble]

I live over the hill but could clearly see (and smell) huge plumes of smoke. Ashes fell everywhere like the wildfires we have in the fall.

During the riots, Charlton Heston said he got a number of calls from big Hollywood anti-gun lefties:

“I got a few phone calls from firmly anti-gun friends in clear conflict. ‘Umm, Chuck, you have quite a few . . . ah, guns, don’t you?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Could you lend me one for a day or so? I tried to buy one, but they have this waiting period . . .’

‘Yeah, I know. I remember you voted for that. Do you know how to use a shotgun?’

‘No, I thought maybe you could teach me. This is getting a little scary.’

‘I noticed. It does that sometimes. I could teach you, but not in an hour. You might shoot yourself instead of the bad guys. The Marines are coming up from Pendleton; that’ll end it. When it does, go buy yourself a good shotgun and take some lessons.’