Remapping Koreatown: Folklore, Narrative and the Los Angeles Riots
1999; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 58; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1500164
ISSN2325-811X
Autores Tópico(s)Philippine History and Culture
Resumocharged with the beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles exploded into one of the most destructive episodes of civil unrest in American history.' Originally centered at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Normandie Avenue in the South Central district, acts of violence, looting and arson quickly spread to other parts of the city (Jencks 1993, 79-80).2 Koreatown, situated just to the north of South Central, found itself directly in the path of this maelstrom of destruction.3 As a result of the widespread arson that accompanied the looting of stores, large parts of the man-made environment were essentially erased from the landscape. In the aftermath of the riots, a landscape that had been defined by the spatial practices of the people who worked and lived in these areas had been deeply scarred and, in some instances, reduced to rubble. The text of the city, particularly in these two neighborhoods, had been forcibly rewritten by the destruction, and the earlier man-made landscape could only be interpolated through a palimpsestic rereading of the city.4 Although committees to both study the cause and effects of the riots and to rebuild Los Angeles were almost immediately established,5 in the considerable period between the physical destruction of places-and the implicit challenge to identities associated with those places embodied in that destructionand the envisioned phoenix-like rise of a rebuilt Los Angeles from the
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