Cho’s novel 'Troublemaker' is a sincere attempt to make sense of an event that we are still trying to understand. This year is the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots.
Some of the most enduring images from the Los Angeles riots are the photos of armed Korean shopkeepers patrolling the rooftops of liquor stores and laundromats to deter rioters.
“We wanted to start at that stereotypical image of the rooftop Koreans. Our thinking was, ‘What if we could humanize this person? What would that look like?’”Though written for a young adult audience, Cho’s novel is a sincere attempt to make sense of an event that we are still trying to understand. This year is the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, and though we are still trying, I don’t think we have fully made sense of what happened.
The novel follows a Korean American boy named Jordan trying to reach his father, a liquor store owner, on the night that the riots break out. His goal is to deliver a gun he found at home to his father so that he can help protect the store. The narrative locates itself around the violent chaos of that night, but never inside of it, turning down the volume to focus on the relationship between Jordan and his father.
“When I heard what happened to Latasha Harlins,” his father said, “I realized, things aren’t different after all. People will make a lot of terrible choices in the name of protection.” Coming of age in the aftermath of the riots, traumatized by the sight of emergency lights and sirens abandoning Koreatown, Cho was taught by his parents to be wary of the outside world. Expect disrespect, insults and injustice, and overcome them.