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Hammer
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews Chung Lee, President of the Korean American Victims Association. They sit in a conference room in an office in Koreatown. Lee is in his 60s. His son is there to translate for him. Deavere Smith includes a phonetic transcription of Lee’s responses, as well as the translations his son provided. Lee recalls how his neighbor called to say that Lee’s store had been looted and all their stock was scattered across the street. It was then that Lee decided to “give up / any sense of attachment to our possessions.” Later, the same neighbor called to tell Lee his store was on fire.
Lee’s account is unique in its straightforwardness: he is practically emotionless as he describes deciding to “give up / any sense of attachment to [his] possessions.” Lee’s resignation might come from a deeper frustration with the erasure of Korean victims of the riots, which were largely absent from media depictions. Korean American businesses, which were prevalent in the majority-Black neighborhood where the riots occurred, were disproportionately targeted, looted, and burned. Beginning Act Three from Lee’s perspective suggests an effort to give voice to the Korean American victims who historically have remained at the periphery of analyses of the 1992 riots.
Themes
