In 1991, Soon Ja Du, a Korean store owner, received a light sentence in the shooting death of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African-American. Anna Deveare Smith portrays African-American community activist Gina Rae (aka Queen Malkah), who repudiates Du’s defense attorney Charles Lloyd, an African-American, and draws a parallel between the cases of Latasha Harlins and Rodney King. Smith also portrays former liquor store owner Jay Woong Yahn, who describes the tensions he used to have with young customers.
For more context on the case of Latasha Harlins, see The Los Angeles Review of Books for a review of The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins : Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots.
