ABSTRACT
Throughout the twentieth century, LA has attracted successive waves of Latin American, Asian, and European immigrants, as well as African Americans who migrated from the South and developed into one of the most diverse cities in the US and the world. LA has become the place where the Atlantic Rim and the Pacific Rim “meet.” This chapter demonstrates that the 1992 uprising occurred under rampant economic inequalities brought about by both deindustrialization and reindustrialization and neoliberal policies, constant police brutality, as well as the systematic exclusion of people of color from juries. It examines the play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith's attempt to create an unvarnished and multilayered depiction of the uprising through the words of actual “participants.” In Twilight, various races/ethnicities, classes, genders, nationalities, ages, and ways of understanding the uprising converge in the person of Smith.
