CCCC, New Orleans, 4/2-4/5: Jed Horne and Chris Rose

Jed Horne is an editor at the Times-Picayune, one of those heroic newspapermen who stuck around New Orleans when his paper's offices were under water and wrote about the impact of Katrina. He subsequently wrote a book that's been called the best book written about Katrina, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City. If you want to check out his Web site, you'll find it at http://jedhorne.com/. I'm seriously thinking about using his book in a class next year, maybe ENG 101 or PDP 150, even though it's over 400 pages long! Take a look at the reviews posted at Amazon.com. I know you'll want to read it.

In his speech at the convention, Horne discussed the media misrepresentations of New Orleans in the hurricane's aftermath and scathingly dismissed the scanty efforts of the administration and the Corps of Engineers, efforts that have failed to revitalize the city's economy, restore some measure of livability to the most thoroughly devastated areas, or protect the city from future storms. He compared New Orleans' flood and hurricane defenses, at this date as the third hurricane season after Katrina rapidly approaches, with the new protective measures taken by the Dutch after they suffered devastating flooding in 1953, saying that they cannot believe how little has been done to improve on--or even restore--New Orleans' protection.

Furthermore, one can't help but conclude that to take a pseudo-objective stance in reporting the struggles and sorrows of New Orleans' people as they sought to re-establish their lives is to be complicit in preserving a hierarchy that privileges white middle-class people at the expense of poor people of color. Do we have an obligation to take some kind of action? I think so. Not only Horne, but the Louisiana State U professor who introduced him, Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, expressed appreciation of the private efforts and initiatives to relieve suffering. It is students like you--when alternative spring breaks take them or you south to build houses for people who need help--that give me faith. Horne expressed his disappointment in the current Presidential campaign for its lack of attention to New Orleans' plight--except for John Edwards' brief campaign that started and ended in the city. He--and some of the attendees--also emphasized the need for bearing witness, for telling what is going on, persistently reminding lawmakers of the untenable situation that has left many families disrupted or in limbo.

This presentation made me think about the great power of the written word to shape our thinking and, I hope, move us to action.

My title mentions Chris Rose. I bought his book, 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina, at one of the shops where I looked for a gift for my daughter Natalie, and I read about half of it during my long journey homeward (lots of time sitting around airports, maybe 2-1/2 hours of actual flight time, and 2 hours' driving time after we got into Richmond). Rose is another Times-Picayune writer, who collected and self-published a number of his post-Katrina columns. The book went through multiple printings and sold 65,000 copies before Simon & Schuster offered to publish it. This book has the raw immediacy of day-by-day reactions to the destruction that Rose saw around him. Having safely evacuated his wife and three small children to his parents' house in the DC suburbs, Rose went back and daily looked at his city and wrote about it poignantly, vividly, often bitterly. His columns, taken together in this book, memorably depict the landscape and the emotions of residents whose city, they feared, would never be restored to the city they had loved. This is still true, of course.

If you haven't read much about Katrina, I urge you to. While there is much to spark sadness in these books, I hope that these books can also move you to civic action. Our first step to being better citizens and advocates of policies that heal and restore is to be informed. And I believe passionately in the power of the written word--whether it's addressed to Congressmen or survivors or church groups, anyone who can do something to make a difference in the lives people lead daily.