Afsara Kelline Mir April 1, 2011 Period 4

Anna Deveare Smith has meshed together many untold stories of victims to racism, bias and prejudice. Though we might perceive this line of work to be her attempt to unveil the truth of the conflict in Crown Heights, I believe that Smith retold the stories that reflected prejudice, racism and bias in Crown Heights, not to seek who was wrong or right in Crown Heights, but to uncover the deep-seated hatred that occurs in this country. The truth may never be revealed but the audience is able to understand that the reasons for the rage in Crown Heights are more than just the Gavin Cato case of Yankel Rosenbaum’s murder. Anna Deveare Smith’s method of finding the truth in peoples stories lies in their syntax. The stutters and the “um’s” give the audience a better understanding of the character because in those stammers and pauses we, even for a moment, see some truth. Although it may help us understand where people are coming from, we still have no definite answer for why things ended up the way they did in Crown Heights. For example, in the monologue titled, Static, a Jewish woman says, “ I saw a little boy in the neighborhood, who I didn’t know and who didn’t know me—not Jewish, he was black and he wasn’t wearing a yarmulke because you can’t—“. The pauses in this particular monologue tell me that this woman is trying to watch what she says. In the times of hatred between Blacks and the Jewish, she did not want to slip up and so we often see her pausing to collect her thoughts or refer back to her story. This monologue does not necessarily help me reflect the truth about the riots in Crown Heights directly but I can not a clear example of stereotyping. The Blacks and the Jewish constantly have pre-determined judgments of the opposing race and we see this often throughout