While in San Francisco recently, I met someone who was not from New Orleans who was writing a novel in which the failure of the federal levees in New Orleans was an important incident. I promised to send him some names of books for background reading, particularly books by NOLA authors he might not come across otherwise.
It occurred to me that other nonlocal people may also be writing books that have scenes set in the new New Orleans. Writers can no longer rely on pre-Flood books or memories from vacation trips. The landscape has changed, the vocabulary has changed, the ethnic makeup of the city has changed, and even the attitudes of people have changed.
Here are a few suggestions for background reading for such writers.
1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose. This book contains some of Rose’s daily columns in the Times-Picayune, which were a must-read for every New Orleanian in the months after the Flood.
Oral history by Dr. Bennett deBoisblanc (my pulmonologist and a hero of the Flood): http://thekatrinaexperience.net/?p=16. Other oral histories collected in the same project can be accessed from http://thekatrinaexperience.net/?cat=1.
Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone: A Memoir by Joshua Clark, a writer and publisher who stayed in his French Quarter apartment during and after the disaster.
Many people have published memoirs since the Flood. This link will take you to memoirs that Amazon.com sells.
If someone is going to write about the aftermath of the Flood, they’ll need to know something about the issues New Orleanians dealt with—mold, insurance claims, depression, unsafe water, financial disaster, lack of electricity, and finding a reputable contractor, among others. Here are a few links to brochures and Web pages.
Spoiled by Tom Varisco. A tiny book of photographs of ruined refrigerators. Available from http://www.tomvariscodesigns.com/shop.html.
Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster by Michael Eric Dyson. An analysis of the role race and social class played in the federal and public response to the Flood.
A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge by Josh Neufeld. A graphic novel about the Flood.
This list is far from comprehensive; there have been a deluge of books about the Deluge. I’d welcome your suggestions for background reading for nonlocal writers.
What a great resource, Shauna! This should be a great help to anyone writing about New Orleans during and post-Katrina.
Yes, great resource of titles. Great idea. New Orleans is more exotic than most of the locales I write about.
thanks for this salient treatment of a city of living metaphor --and I don't mean that lightly. I have never seen such a place where Metaphor actually holds physical form and can even kill.
There is are strong efforts currently to make sure that This Story is told Correctly, to wit: New Orleans was flooded by Man-Made Disaster, Engineering Failure, and NOT by Hurricane Katrina which missed the City by nearly 30 miles.
That is a Difference which makes a Difference, as Gregory Bateson once put it.
So I am telling you all now to think about it.
There is a difference between Natural Disaster and Catastrophic Engineering Failure.
Come on over and climb the Ladder, we got yer'resources!
EDTILLA~NEW ORLEANS LADDER, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to list some more resources for my readers. I really appreciate it.
As a former New Orleanean whose house was badly damaged by the Flood, I am well aware that the Flood was a manmade disaster, as was the government response (excepting the Coast Guard), and I make the point every chance I get. We need to make sure history records correctly what happened to our city, and why.
This is an excellent resource for writers. Thanks for collecting all these links and providing the descriptions.
Although Katrina was 4 years ago, now some of those returning are also having to deal w/Chinese drywall in their rebuilt homes. Not to mention those who ended up w/respiratory problems from the FEMA trailers they were supplied with. Is there no end?