—————————— A SHARP RAP AT THE DOOR WOKE me up. The morning light bludgeoned my eyes and my throat felt like I’d swallowed sand. I glanced at my clock and the red lines glared at me, informing me it was once again past ten.
The rapping came again. “Did you still want to go to South Central?” asked Mom through the door.
I stumbled into the dining room, where a frothy green smoothie sat on my placemat, made with Mom’s new high-powered blender. I sipped it and felt its promise of renewal, the vitamins edging me back from oblivion. Underneath, though, my insides ached from the alcohol, and a drum of guilt pounded away.
Mom appeared at the door. “My hangover cure,” she said, holding up her own glass of green liquid. “It has turmeric. More partying with CJ?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“You look like hell,” said Mom. “Keep sleeping. We’ll go another time.”
“No,” I said. White light soaked the blinds of the dining room, announcing another cloudless day. “This is important. Just give me, like, fifteen minutes.”
I made a double dose of coffee from the machine and drank it standing in the kitchen. It infused me with a bright, hollow energy. I was like a zombie, reanimated by chemicals, which was exactly why everyone drank coffee all day at their cubicles: to force their bodies into the repetitive motions that greased the machine, zombie originally a word for the eerie act of walking to and from work. CJ’s voice came to me, telling me to shut the fuck up, Adorno.
* * *
The morning had already turned hot, the yellow sun burning its small, bright hole through the blue dome. A wisp of clouds hovered in the west. Another problem with L.A. was that no matter how shitty you felt, the days were relentlessly sunny. New York gave you the bitter gray to match.
“I can drive,” I said to Mom, in the driveway. “Since I suggested the outing.”
She looked skeptical but handed me the keys. I backed the car out, glad to have a distraction from the embarrassing scenes of the night before replaying in my head, from the aching bruise on my shin.
We drove back down La Brea. A strip mall, with its white, faux–art deco facade caught my eye. I remembered when it was a fenced-in lot, filled with rubble. There were lots like it all over Mid-Wilshire and K-Town during the nineties, remnants of the riots that no one wanted to touch. I was like some washed-up detective, seeking one little piece of evidence that lay, absurdly, in the middle of one of the most recorded events in recent American history. But if my hunch was right, it was buried because of its potential power—an example of cross-racial solidarity that would blow apart the narrative that our communities were always at war with each other. I felt a little flash of hope.
I merged onto the 10 freeway, pushing the fuel-efficient engine to catch up with the cars zipping by. It was always a little rush to be back on the freeway, to float above the city. The monotony of the flat buildings dropped away, and instead we saw palm trees pricking the sky, the San Bernardino Mountains emerging from the smog like gray ghosts.
“So,” said Mom, “where did you want to go?”
“I was thinking you could just show me some of the sites where you and Bobby did your work. On the Coalition.”
“Oh, god,” she said. “It’s been so long—all these podunk little churches and delis.”
I sighed. I hadn’t made a plan, and either Mom was being evasive or had actually forgotten. I kept driving anyway.
The freeway banked as it approached the huddle of downtown, as if the engineers hadn’t counted on actual tall buildings in L.A. and had to reroute at the last minute. I merged onto the Harbor Freeway as it dipped below street level, moving through urban renewal’s legacy, which, instead of “renewing,” sliced up Black and Brown neighborhoods with six lanes of concrete.
“We could go to Watts Towers,” said Mom. “At least it’s something to look at.”
“Honestly,” I said, “I’ve never been.”
“Not even on a school trip?”
I shook my head. “I mean, you sent me to school on the Westside, so we went to the Getty, not Watts.”
“Watts Towers ain’t the Getty.”
“Isn’t that the point? The neighborhood is underresourced, so it’s impossible to imagine a Getty in South Central. And actually, if it were there, it would probably just create neocolonialist dynamics that didn’t benefit the neighborhood.”
“Are we going or not?” Mom asked.
“Sorry, yes.” I was picking fights, the outing mixing poorly with my headache.
I pulled off the freeway and Mom handed me her phone. “You do the thing,” she said. I tapped in the location and a mechanical voice directed us through a residential area.
I turned onto a cul-de-sac and they appeared right in front of us: a cluster of hollow structures shaped like elongated Christmas trees, made of steel bars and ceramic shards set into concrete. They were weirder and smaller than I’d thought, the kind of thing you’d find in yards with lots of cats and overgrown spider plants.
I parked and we got out. A white metal gate circled the towers, announcing that they were closed for restoration. Single-family homes sat just across the street. A woman came out to check her mail, glanced at us, accustomed to strangers, and went back inside.
Mom put her big, knockoff Chanel sunglasses on and looked up. “Kind of ugly, huh?”
I read the informational plaques posted on the white fence. “Some white guy made these? And this is the symbol of the neighborhood?” I stared skeptically at the colorful glass fragments catching the sunlight.
Mom shrugged. “When the Watts riots happened, they left the towers alone. Everyone wants something to mark their neighborhood.”
The Watts riots—Bobby had lived through them, and yet that history felt ancient, even more remote than Sa-i-gu. “America has some serious social amnesia,” I said. “In all those news reports from 1992, the reporters are so shocked, like, My god, here, in Los Angeles?”
Mom clicked her tongue. “We warned people. Bobby and I were on a panel and some reporter asked if there could be another Watts riot. Bobby said, ‘Like Watts, but worse.’” Mom fanned herself with her hand. “The reporter didn’t like that.”
“Now Ferguson and Baltimore are burning and people are surprised again.”
“Like you said, you’d never even been to Watts. That’s how people are: if the problem isn’t right in front of them, they ignore it.”
“But I made it a point to educate myself.”
“Of course you did. Not everyone has the time or resources.”
“So what, being an activist is itself a privilege?”
Mom lowered her gaze from the towers down to me. “You have a lot to learn, my son. Ready to go?”
I glanced back at the alien edifices. I’d come to embed myself in the history of this place, but instead I felt like a tourist. I had no idea how to close the distance between myself and the people I supposedly stood for.
We got back into the car and I backed out of the sleepy street. The seat belts and steering wheel were hot to the touch from those few minutes. Mom turned the AC on and a rush of air dissipated the heat.
Mom smacked her lips. “Why don’t we get some water.”
“Single-use plastics?”
“Ai. You want to stay thirsty?” Mom pointed out the window. “Here’s a place.”
I didn’t have it in me to argue and swerved into the strip mall. A sign with classic black letters against a yellow background advertised STAR DELI in the corner.
We pushed through the door and an electronic eye dinged above us. I blinked to adjust to the dark interior. Mom strode back to the refrigeration units with drinks illuminated like gems. She chose a bottle and brought it to the register. A window of thick fiberglass protected the cashier and the easy-to-steal items: lottery cards, Advil, cigarettes, and condoms.
The man behind the counter rose slowly and turned to us. He was Korean, naturally, with a square face dotted by liver spots. He wore a gray cargo vest, despite the heat outside, as if he were ready for a long journey or a battle.
Mom looked around the store. “I swear, this looks familiar.”
The man rang up the water. “Two fifty,” he said.
She handed him the money, then switched to Korean and said something about meetings.
He looked up, and his heavy-lidded eyes moved across my mother’s face, as if deciding whether or not to acknowledge her.
I realized what Mom was asking and saw an opening. “Excuse me,” I said. “Did you live through Sa-i-gu?”
He made an expression so cold it could almost pass for neutral. Mom repeated the question in Korean.
The man answered with a phlegmy, dismissive rasp from the back of his throat. He handed Mom her change.
“Hey,” I said, “you could be a little friendlier, considering my mother tried to repair relations between you and the customers that gave you a livelihood.”
The man gave me that cold stare again. Then, like something ignited inside him, he started to shout in Korean. He flung his arm out and then slammed his palm on the counter, speaking too quickly for me to understand. I froze, mesmerized by his scowling face. Mom motioned me outside.
We paused under the overhang in front of the store. It ensured, as with so many things in L.A., that the customer spent as little time exposed to the elements as possible. The asphalt lot steamed in the heat.
“What an asshole,” said Mom in a jaded voice, unscrewing the cap. She drank and then turned to me. “How nice that my son is standing up for his mother.” She reached over to tap my cheek and I stepped away.
“What was he saying?”
“Oh, you know—those sons of bitches, I gave them jobs, and they still burned me out. That kind of thing.”
She handed me the bottle and I drank the cool, electrolyte-infused water. My throat was so dry the liquid almost hurt. I took another sip and felt my guts rumble as they processed the alcohol from last night.
“Cool, so he thinks people should be grateful for being exploited.”
“Do you appreciate your mother’s work now?” asked Mom. “Dealing with people like that all the time?”
“Why does anyone shop here, if he’s like that?” I asked.
Mom chuckled. “You know, that was one of our campaigns during the Coalition. We handed out these etiquette guidelines, saying, Smile at customers and Place the change in their hands, not on the counter.” She shook her head. “My people.”
“Rudeness is some inherently Korean thing?”
“Working fourteen-hour days and in a shitty store where you might be shot doesn’t help.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “That’s just colonizer’s paranoia—that you’re going to be killed because you’re not wanted there.”
“They were being killed.” Mom grunted. “Of course, that’s not how the media told it, or how the history is written.”
I shook my head as I worked to square his with what I knew. “Well, but the Black community was in a position of captivity, while Koreans were extracting resources to build their middle-class livelihoods elsewhere.”
“Would you have said that to the parents whose seven-year-old daughter was shot in a robbery? To the widows of the men who were killed in their stores?” Mom let the question hover. “Koreans had this dilemma: Do we try to talk about the violence we’re suffering and hold press conferences like the other side? Or do we just keep it quiet and hope it stops? Guess which they chose.”
Over my shoulder I could just see into the deli and make out the back of the man’s head through the register window. I understood that fiberglass wasn’t just there to display cigarettes—it was bulletproof.
I’d started sweating again and felt drained. We got into the car, turned on the engine, and blasted the AC. I looked at the map on my phone and an idea came to me.
“We’re right by Florence and Normandie!” I said.
“Whatever you want,” said Mom. “It’s your history lesson.”
We were only ten minutes from the intersection where people first gathered that evening in April 1992, when all four cops who beat Rodney King bloody were let off with nothing. I’d rewatched the famous footage, preserved on YouTube: a news helicopter circled above the crowds milling in gas stations, throwing bottles and rocks at any car driven by a white person; some guys pulled a truck driver from his cab and kicked him in the ribs, the face. It was where that intangible shift happened, when the clink of breaking glass announced to the millions watching that the rules of everyday life were suspended, because the rules never were made for some.
We approached the intersection. “Good,” said Mom. “I need to gas up. You know, this car is so fuel efficient I forget.”
“Seriously? You’re going to gas up at those stations?”
“So dramatic. Pull in.”
I drove into the 76, which was, to be fair, like any in L.A. with its boxy white awning and a little booth in the center. It seemed wrong for it to lack any historical marker, any sign of what began there. But for that to happen, we’d have to live in a society that wanted to understand that history instead of writing it off as a mob of discontented Black and Brown people who wanted to smash windows and grab shoes.
Mom unscrewed the gas tank and swiped her card. I leaned on the car beside her, squinting against the heavy sun. The gasoline fumes pressed into my nose and mouth like a gag. We were far from the ocean, far from everything light and breezy that made the pop version of L.A.
Another gas station sat across the street, and the two other corners opened onto driveways for an auto parts store and a deli. This was L.A.’s makeshift town square, its piazza: two gas stations with enough open space for a few dozen people to come together and shout, No justice, no peace.
“Where were you that day?” I asked Mom.
She kept looking at the pump display as it ticked up the price. “Same place as everyone else: at home watching the shit go down on the news.”
“You and Bobby didn’t, like, do some emergency convening?”
Mom kept staring at the pump, as if it were easier to talk to it than me. “I tried. That night, there was a meeting at the First AME in South Central. Bobby and I took separate cars, but it was so crowded I had to circle and circle and finally ended up near some Korean deli. Even during a riot it was hard to park.” She smiled weakly. “I got out of the car and started walking. Then I realized the people around me were stopping and staring: like, what the fuck is this Korean woman doing alone in South Central right now? But it wasn’t curiosity. I’ll never forget their eyes, the intensity. I realized I could die. I got back in and drove. That night, I saw the deli on the news, on fire.”
I looked around this intersection again. It seemed impossible that anyone would wish us harm, would find our Asian faces anything but unusual. “Didn’t that kind of run counter to the Coalition? Wasn’t the point to show up?”
“And what,” said Mom, turning to me and raising her voice, “get the crap beaten out of me? You know what happened to people that day?”
“Okay, okay.” I changed course. “I guess what I’m saying is, how did the Coalition work with all the anti-Black violence during the uprising? I mean, the whole reason Koreans were targeted, right, was because of Soon Ja Du killing Latasha Harlins over a bottle of orange juice.”
Mom’s lips thinned. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“How? It was on tape.” We’d watched the famous fuzzy gray security footage in preparation for a teach-in and I remember Tiff and Ash grunting in disgust. “Harlins was walking away when Du slammed a bullet into the back of her head.”
“They edited that tape,” said Mom. “The two of them were in a big fight right before, swinging at each other and throwing things.”
“Mom, do you hear yourself? Du was a forty-year-old woman with a gun, and Harlins was fifteen.”
“Obviously I’m not saying it was justified,” said Mom through a clenched jaw. “I feel for that girl and her family—it was terrible. But Du was probably this traumatized woman who didn’t know the country or language and was on edge from working nonstop, and she panicked.”
“Right, just like Liang ‘panicked’ in the stairwell.” Frustration rose in me. “In each case, one person had a gun and wasn’t dead at the end. One was innocent because of being Asian and one was guilty for being Black. They ‘didn’t mean it,’ and anyway they kind of look like us, so we should forgive them and move on.” I paused for breath. “You guys condemned the killing, right? The Coalition.”
“It’s not that simple. Like I said, I was working for the city—we couldn’t take sides.”
“Take sides? What other side is there to take?”
“Of course we said that the killing was a tragedy. But we couldn’t say, Du was a murderer. Or Boycott Du’s store, like the people picketing. That would’ve alienated the Korean side of the Coalition.”
“God forbid they lose a little business.”
“Not ‘a little business,’” Mom said sharply. “This was their livelihood.”
“If the Coalition couldn’t say something as simple as that, what was the point?” I knew this was harsh but momentum pushed me forward, and I wanted to see how far it would take me.
“You don’t understand how it was then,” Mom shot back. “It was intense. We were getting shit on all sides. We even got death threats.”
“So what?” I cut her off. “We’re getting death threats!” I liked saying it, the power of it. “That doesn’t stop us: all it means is that we’re moving people. We have those conservative Chinese scared.”
The gas pump clicked off with a shudder. The nozzle sat silent and lifeless in the tank.
“What?” said Mom. Her voice thinned.
“So what,” I repeated. “Some friend sent me a link to some right-wing message boards posting my photo and calling me names.”
“Reed—I told you not to be on that Twitter thing. How did they get your photo?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t Twitter, these are shadow forums—people are such cowards that they want to stay anonymous.”
“Cowards are more dangerous!” she pleaded. “You could get hurt.”
The concern in Mom’s voice made me furious. I looked above and behind her. “I’m not even getting the worst of it. They found Tiff’s address and posted it, with rape and death threats. But who the fuck are we going to report it to, the cops?” I took a breath. “People are dying. Cops are hunting Black folks, and Asian people are ready to condone it if it means getting a taste of whiteness.”
“Reed,” Mom steadied herself and her words came out smooth, like steel. “This is not your crisis. I want you to stop. I’m serious.”
I snorted. “That’s your take? Only work on a crisis if you can do it safely? Some organizer you’ve become.”
Mom’s eyes flashed and her hand shot toward me, cutting the space between us. It moved from pure instinct, a bird darting through the air.
The hand froze. It stood, suspended, as if realizing what it was doing. I looked in Mom’s eyes and they were no longer pleading or angry but watery with confusion. The hand lowered slowly, as if by pulley.
But it had been there, inches away. Both of us saw it and saw each other seeing it. And even though it hadn’t made contact it summoned a monstrous force—some leviathan had surfaced from just below our conversations, even if just to show us its barbed spine.
I got inside the car and slammed the door. A low ringing came into my ears. I willed myself to believe that I’d won, that I’d stood against Mom’s failure to take a stance.
Mom slid into the driver’s seat quietly and started the car. A hard silence held us. “I’m sorry, Reed. Okay?” said Mom. “I stopped myself, didn’t I?”
I gritted my teeth and let anger seethe in me. The sense of victory would slip away if I accepted her apology. I forced myself to stare forward as we passed the cheap, faded signs of South Central, each block reminding me why people wanted to set the whole thing on fire.
“Listen,” she said in a tired voice. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. If you need me to say you’re a better organizer than me—fine. You’re smarter, you’re more focused than I was at your age. You have a stronger analysis. I can say all this, but I don’t think it’s going to make you happy.”
A silent, horrible scream filled my brain, rejecting all those admissions I’d supposedly wanted. I should’ve gloated, but I only wanted to cry. I clenched my throat instead.
To cede even an inch would mean admitting that Mom wasn’t in control at that moment, admitting that she was driven by a power that I knew even though I couldn’t name or understand it, a power that was consuming me even in that moment.
“Who said anything about being happy?” I muttered.
Mom recoiled, as if I’d tried to hit her back. She pulled onto the freeway and we shot forward, the flat city blurring below us.