Download or read book Post Katrina Recovery Oral Histories written by Claudette Jones and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How We Came Back written by Nona Martin Storr and published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts. This book was released on 2015-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana, displacing half a million people and causing more than $100 billion in damage in the Greater New Orleans region. The nation wondered how the people of New Orleans could recover from a disaster of this magnitude, the costliest in American history. Within a few years of Katrina, hundreds of thousands had returned and were rebuilding their homes. How they have come back is, to say the least, something of a puzzle. A decade later, this book presents 17 oral histories of Hurricane Katrina survivors from four diverse New Orleans communities. The oral histories explore how these individuals, families, and communities began to rebuild after the devastation. These testimonies show that communities can be surprisingly resilient in the wake of disaster, especially thanks to early and disproportionately large individual efforts. Why have some communities rebounded quickly while others have lagged behind? Even after accounting for obvious factors, such as degree of damage, median income, and flood insurance, much of the variance remains unexplained. What are the socially embedded resources that communities have drawn on to develop effective recovery strategies? Why, despite the commitment of significant government resources, have many of the official forms of assistance produced disappointing results? This book explores the answers to these persistent questions, which have dogged social scientists over the past 10 years. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as fitting tribute to the vision, resolve, and industriousness of those who came back.
Download or read book Overcoming Katrina written by D. Penner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-09 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overcoming Katrina tells the stories of 27 New Orleanians as they fought to survive Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Their oral histories offer first-hand experiences: three days on a roof with Navy veteran Leonard Smith; at the convention center with waitress Eleanor Thornton; and with Willie Pitford, an elevator man, as he rescued 150 people in New Orleans East. Overcoming approaches the question of why New Orleans matters, from perspectives of the individuals who lived, loved, worked, and celebrated life and death there prior to being scattered across the country by Hurricane Katrina. This book's twenty-seven narrators range from Mack Slan, a conservative businessman who disparages the younger generation for not sharing his ability to make "good, rational decisions," to Kalamu ya Salaam, who was followed by the New Orleans Police Department for several years as a militant defender of Black Power in the late 1960s and '70s. These narratives are memorials to the corner stores, the Baptist churches, the community health clinics, and those streets where the aunties stood on the corner, and whose physical traces have now all been washed away. They conclude with visions of a safer, equitably rebuilt New Orleans. *Scroll down for more audio excerpts from Overcoming Katrina*.
Download or read book Writing to re New Orleans written by Daisy Pignetti and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly every website or software application these days features a feed to subscribe to, a network to join, or a social timeline to track--all of which do their part to influence public opinion, promote products, and bring people closer together. Being a blogger since 2003 exposed me to these user-generated trends, but never did I expect my blog space, or any others, to play such an important role in my emotional well-being; not until Hurricane Katrina hit. Sharing my story as a transplanted New Orleanian watching the disaster unfold from afar in a public forum quickly linked me to other local voices, and soon I discovered a burgeoning "Big Easy" blogosphere. This dissertation thus illustrates how online communications have the ability to evolve into cathartic and socially responsible exchanges during and after times of disaster. Relying on qualitative research methods, I first discuss existing kinds of texts (news reports, comments on news sites, print publications, oral histories, etc.) to offer a picture of how Hurricane Katrina appeared and was treated by various traditional media. I then shift focus to digital spaces, featuring profiles of various New Orleans bloggers that I compiled through a series of interviews and analysis of their perpetual posting of blog entries, photos, videos, and status updates. I conclude their writing is a shared social experience with the Internet offering multiple platforms across which they can resist the debilitating effects of trauma and present their audiences with a deeper, truer understanding of what life is like in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Download or read book Hurricane Katrina written by James Patterson Smith and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the fullest account yet written of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rooted in a wealth of oral histories, it tells the dramatic but underreported story of a people who confronted the unprecedented devastation of sixty-five-thousand homes when the eye wall and powerful northeast quadrant of the hurricane swept a record thirty-foot storm surge across a seventy-five-mile stretch of unprotected Mississippi towns and cities. James Patterson Smith takes us through life and death accounts of storm day, August 29, 2005, and the precarious days of food and water shortages that followed. Along the way the narrative treats us to inspiring episodes of neighborly compassion and creative responses to the greatest natural disaster in American history. The heroes of this saga are the local people and local officials. In often moving accounts, the book addresses the Mississippi Gulf Coast's long struggle to remove a record-setting volume of debris and get on with the rebuilding of homes, schools, jobs, and public infrastructure. Along the way readers are offered insights into the politics of recovery funding and the bureaucratic bungling and hubris that afflicted the storm response and complicated and delayed the work of recovery. Still, there are ample accounts of things done well, and a moving chapter gives us a feel for the psychological, spiritual, and material impact of the eight hundred thousand people from across the nation who gave of themselves as volunteers in the Mississippi recovery effort.
Download or read book Katrina written by Susan M. Moyer and published by Sports Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2005 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 7 a.m. on August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana coast between Grand Isle and the mouth of the Mississippi River as a strong Category 4 hurricane. The devastation she would bring to the Gulf Coast was widespread and unimaginable. Though warnings had been issued for days and evacuations initiated, thousands stood in the path of one of the strongest storms in the history of America. Left with no power, no drinking water, dwindling food supplies, and steadily rising waters from major levee breaches, survivors also faced life-threatening looting and widespread fires. Efforts to limit the flooding were initially unsuccessful and refugees from the hurricane fought for their very survival on the streets of New Orleans and throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. While tragedy and desperation brought out the worst in some, it also inspired courage and hope in others, giving them the will to triumph against incalculable odds.
Download or read book An Oral History with Sharri Reed written by Sharri Reed and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharri Reed describes her experience of Hurricane Katrina and the efforts to recover from the disaster.
Download or read book Rethinking Disaster Recovery written by Jeannie Haubert and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Disaster Recovery focuses attention on the social inequalities that existed on the Gulf Coast before Hurricane Katrina and how they have been magnified or altered since the storm. With a focus on social axes of power such as gender, sexuality, race, and class, this book tells new and personalized stories of recovery that help to deepen our understanding of the disaster. Specifically, the volume examines ways in which gender and sexuality issues have been largely ignored in the emerging post-Katrina literature. The voices of young racial and ethnic minorities growing up in post-Katrina New Orleans also rise to the surface as they discuss their outlook on future employment. Environmental inequities and the slow pace of recovery for many parts of the city are revealed through narrative accounts from volunteers helping to rebuild. Scholars, who were themselves impacted, tell personal stories of trauma, displacement, and recovery as they connect their biographies to a larger social context. These insights into the day-to-day lives of survivors over the past ten years help illuminate the complex disaster recovery process and provide key lessons for all-too-likely future disasters. How do experiences of recovery vary along several axes of difference? Why are some able to recover quickly while others struggle? What is it like to live in a city recovering from catastrophe and what are the prospects for the future? Through on-the-ground observation and keen sociological analysis, Rethinking Disaster Recovery answers some of these questions and suggests interesting new avenues for research.
Download or read book There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster written by Gregory Squires and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster is the first comprehensive critical book on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The disaster will go down on record as one of the worst in American history, not least because of the government’s inept and cavalier response. But it is also a huge story for other reasons; the impact of the hurricane was uneven, and race and class were deeply implicated in the unevenness. Hartman and. Squires assemble two dozen critical scholars and activists who present a multifaceted portrait of the social implications of the disaster. The book covers the response to the disaster and the roles that race and class played, its impact on housing and redevelopment, the historical context of urban disasters in America and the future of economic development in the region. It offers strategic guidance for key actors - government agencies, financial institutions, neighbourhood organizations - in efforts to rebuild shattered communities.
Download or read book Standing in the Need written by Katherine E. Browne and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standing in the Need presents an intimate account of an African American family’s ordeal after Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm struck, this family of one hundred fifty members lived in the bayou communities of St. Bernard Parish just outside New Orleans. Rooted there like the wild red iris of the coastal wetlands, the family had gathered for generations to cook and share homemade seafood meals, savor conversation, and refresh their interconnected lives. In this lively narrative, Katherine Browne weaves together voices and experiences from eight years of post-Katrina research. Her story documents the heartbreaking struggles to remake life after everyone in the family faced ruin. Cast against a recovery landscape managed by outsiders, the efforts of family members to help themselves could get no traction; outsiders undermined any sense of their control over the process. In the end, the insights of the story offer hope. Written for a broad audience and supported by an array of photographs and graphics, Standing in the Need offers readers an inside view of life at its most vulnerable.
Download or read book My Storm written by Edward J. Blakely and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward J. Blakely has been called upon to help rebuild after some of the worst disasters in recent American history, from the San Francisco Bay Area's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake to the September 11 attacks in New York. Yet none of these jobs compared to the challenges he faced in his appointment by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin as Director of the Office of Recovery and Development Administration following Hurricane Katrina. In Katrina's wake, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast suffered a disaster of enormous proportions. Millions of pounds of water crushed the basic infrastructure of the city. A land area six times the size of Manhattan was flooded, destroying 200,000 homes and leaving most of New Orleans under water for 57 days. No American city had sustained that amount of destruction since the Civil War. But beneath the statistics lies a deeper truth: New Orleans had been in trouble well before the first levee broke, plagued with a declining population, crumbling infrastructure, ineffective government, and a failed school system. Katrina only made these existing problems worse. To Blakely, the challenge was not only to repair physical damage but also to reshape a city with a broken economy and a racially divided, socially fractured community. My Storm is a firsthand account of a critical sixteen months in the post-Katrina recovery process. It tells the story of Blakely's endeavor to transform the shell of a cherished American city into a city that could not only survive but thrive. He considers the recovery effort's successes and failures, candidly assessing the challenges at hand and the work done—admitting that he sometimes stumbled, especially in managing press relations. For Blakely, the story of the post-Katrina recovery contains lessons for all current and would-be planners and policy makers. It is, perhaps, a cautionary tale.
Download or read book An Oral History with Ken Lobert written by Ken Lobert and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Lobert discusses the experience of Hurricane Katrina and the work to recover from the disaster.
Download or read book Consuming Katrina written by Kate Parker Horigan and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When and under what circumstances are disaster survivors able to speak for themselves in the public arena? In Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative, author Kate Parker Horigan shows how the public understands and remembers large-scale disasters like Hurricane Katrina, outlining which stories are remembered and why, as well as the impact on public memory and the survivors themselves. Horigan discusses unique contexts in which personal narratives about the storm are shared, including interviews with survivors, Dave Eggers's Zeitoun, Josh Neufeld's A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble the Water, and public commemoration during Hurricane Katrina's tenth anniversary in New Orleans. In each case, survivors initially present themselves in specific ways, counteracting negative stereotypes that characterize their communities. However, when adapted for public presentation, their stories get reduced back to those stereotypes. As a result, people affected by Katrina continue to be seen in limited terms, as either undeserving or incapable of managing recovery. This project is rooted in Horigan's experiences living in New Orleans before and after Katrina, but it is also a case study illustrating an ongoing problem and an innovative solution: survivors' stories should be shared in a way that includes their own engagement with the processes of narrative production, circulation, and reception. When survivors are seen as agents in their own stories, they will be seen as agents in their own recovery. Having a better grasp on the processes of narration and memory is critical for improved disaster response because the stories that are most widely shared about disaster determine how communities recover.
Download or read book An Oral History with Stephanie Mayo written by Stephanie Mayo and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephanie Mayo describes her experience of Hurricane Katrina and the efforts to recover from the disaster.
Download or read book Ten Years after Katrina written by Mary Ruth Marotte and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported—and misreported—by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie’s observation that, “Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is.” This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie’s formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie’s rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.
Download or read book An Oral History with Brian Carriere written by Brian Anthony Carriere and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Carriere relates his experiences with Hurricane Katrina, including his City Council work after the storm and the progress of ongoing recovery efforts.
Download or read book An Oral History with Arneshia Jenkins written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arneshia Jenkins describes how the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina impacted her personal life and the lives of those around her. She discusses the conditions just after the storm, her family's recovery in Moss Point, Mississippi, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She was in eighth grade during Hurricane Katrina.
