Benina Stern ('16, American Studies)

Connection to a place makes the history within it all the more personal.

I have lived in Los Angeles my entire life (before coming to Stanford, of course--I have no idea where I live now). When I learned in one of my high school history classes that six days of civil unrest happened in my city a mere two years before I was born, I sought to figure out how this shaped my experience growing up as an Angeleno, in such a diverse patchwork of a city. I remember my parents driving me around the soccer fields I played on, blocks away from the Federal Building, or the non-freeway route to my uncle’s house in the West Adams district, pointing out which stores were looted and burned. I remember visiting the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which broke ground right after the riots, and understanding for the first time the gains and contradictions of “urban renewal.”

 

"... I sought to figure out how this shaped my experience growing up as an Angeleno, in such a diverse patchwork of a city."

 

Despite the identification of individual landmarks, we still talked about those six days in 1992 in such broad terms: race riots, uprisings, violent altercations—terms that could be used to identify trends of systemic racial discrimination, showing that the events in Los Angeles were not new. However, these words could not capture the diversity of emotions and opinions the people of Los Angeles had.

Years after those car rides, I sit here at Stanford in 2015 listening to a conversation between Anna Deavere Smith and Professor Harry Elam, after watching a screening of Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. One of the hallmarks of Smith’s performance style is that one woman plays all the parts, a notion that carries a multiplicity of implications—she showcases the diversity of voices within a moment of trauma, while creating a unified, and universal, message through its presentation with one body. We realize the uniqueness of these stories, and—at the same time—we are allowed the room to form an emotional connection to them and their truths, since it is one voice talking to us.

 

"... [Smith] showcases the diversity of voices within a moment of trauma, while creating a unified, and universal, message through its presentation with one body."

 

The fact that we can see Anna change from character to character gives us enough separation from the art that we can form our own opinions, beyond the broadness of labels. Crafting a theatrical piece around specific narratives provides the necessary nuance to provide active education about history, but her embodiment of them all serves as a lesson in empathy and healing through art.