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YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, 2025

“Tensions between the communities are equitably highlighted as Yoo outlines the system that still denies both groups basic rights by recounting details from King, Harlins, and Song Lee’s lives. Moments of solidarity are peppered throughout, as when Black residents protect a Korean-owned music stall from destruction amid societal unrest. Yoo’s message of empathy, progress, and resilience following tragedy prove resonant in this moving account that remains relevant to contemporary society, in which smartphones have replaced camcorders in individuals’ quest to expose police brutality and systemic racism.”
– Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

 

Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire

Written by Paula Yoo
Published by Norton Young Readers

In the spring of 1992, after a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged in the brutal beating of a Black man, Rodney King, Los Angeles was torn apart. Thousands of fires were set, causing more than a billion dollars in damage. In neighborhoods abandoned by the police, protestors and storeowners exchanged gunfire. More than 12,000 people were arrested and 2,400 injured. Sixty-three died.

In Rising from the Ashes, award-winning author Paula Yoo draws on the experience of the city’s Korean American community to narrate and illuminate this uprising, from the racism that created economically disadvantaged neighborhoods torn by drugs and gang-related violence, to the tensions between the city’s minority communities. At its heart are the stories of three lives and three families: those of Rodney King; of Latasha Harlins, a Black teenager shot and killed by a Korean American storeowner; and Edward Jae Song Lee, a Korean American man killed in the unrest. Woven throughout, and set against a minute-by-minute account of the uprising, are the voices of dozens others: police officers, firefighters, journalists, business owners, and activists whose recollections give texture and perspective to the events of those five days in 1992 and their impact over the years that followed.

Primary ISBN: 9781324030904
Publication Date: May 2024
Available As: Hardcover, Audiobook, eBook
Nonfiction, Young Adult, Age 12 or older

Community Represented:

Themes: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting: United States (Los Angeles, CA)

Character's Place in the Immigration Journey: Unknown Arrival

Book Creator(s) Connection to the Community Represented: Own Voices/Lived Experience

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