Hurricane Katrina

Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans, the City Where Food Is Almost Everything

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

I’ve had a long and passionate love affair with New Orleans, although I’ve never been there. In fifth grade, I did my state report on Louisiana, and as a bored teenager in a Los Angeles suburb where everything was bright, shiny, and new, I’d dream of spending my days in the historic French Quarter, hanging out in smoky jazz bars and eating poor boy sandwiches at cramped lunch counters. I idealized the city even further when a childhood friend became a teenage runaway, hitchhiking her way to New Orleans with her much older boyfriend, both of them squatting in abandoned houses and panhandling in the streets. For some reason, that sounded like a beat novel I wanted to be a part of, as opposed to the nightmare it actually was.

Like everyone else, I watched with a heavy heart as one of our nation’s finest cities, so completely unlike any other place because of its history, demographics, and genetic makeup, disappeared off the face of the map, under sludge and murky water. I knew New Orleans would recover—it had to—but I was worried it would never be what it once was, that it would turn into a sad caricature of itself. If the premise of Tom Fitzmorris’ book Hungry Town is correct, no matter what happens, New Orleans will never be lost as long as its food culture survives and thrives, breathing life into the incessantly struggling city.

Fitzmorris’s thesis is actually quite simple: Food saved New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now, I know many won’t believe that. I also know that recommending this book to lovers of food, regional cooking, or the city of New Orleans itself wouldn’t be fair. Truth be told, there are many who won’t understand the purpose of this book. Many will not like the author’s obsessive details or encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s food and restaurants. They'll think he's pompous, self-important, and crazy to think that it was the poor boy or red beans and rice or simple gumbo that saved the city—and that’s fair. But for those of us who know the power of food, its ability to bring people together, to calm the nerves and the soul, and quiet the hunger, we can believe that Fitzmorris is right in every way.

The author is a lifelong New Orleanian who’s been critiquing the city’s food, writing about it in various formats, and discussing it endlessly on his radio show for over thirty years. It all started in the late 1970s, when he began publishing a newsletter called The New Orleans MENU, which lives on today on his website. It would be an understatement to say that Fitzmorris is a fanatic, a man completely obsessed with his city’s food culture, its Creole and Cajun cuisine, and its restaurants; Hungry Town is the embodiment of this fanaticism.

After Hurricane Katrina, the author was forced to stay away from his beloved city for longer than he ever had before: about two weeks. While away, he received word that some of the city’s restaurants were reopening, using bottled water and small burners to feed the crowds that braved the storm. Fitzmorris began calling chefs and friends in the area, each day adding to a list on his website that featured all the eateries that were opening their doors. Just two weeks after the hurricane blew the lid off of New Orleans, twenty-two restaurants were open for service. It is because of this and similar compelling evidence that Fitzmorris believes that food saved New Orleans and that its slow-coming rebirth is beginning in the kitchen.

Interwoven with recipes for delicious New Orleans treats, menus from some of the city’s oldest restaurants, timelines, and a rundown of every major player in the New Orleans food scene, is the story of how Fitzmorris' love affair with his city’s food began. I thought Hungry Town was a beautiful ode to a great city and its wonderful food, but I know it’s not for everyone. This summer, I will be traveling by train to New Orleans and I’ll be using Hungry Town as my restaurant guide, which I think is a testament to how informative Fitzmorris' book is and how alluring a beignet and a cafe au lait can be.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, July 11th 2010

Trouble the Water

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Directed by Tia Lessin, Carl Deal

Zeitgeist Films

If you missed the exhaustively, deservedly lauded Trouble the Water in theaters last year, now you can catch it on the small screen. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (it lost to Man on Wire), Trouble the Water follows New Orleans residents Kimberly "Kim" Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts from the day Katrina makes landfall to a year and a half afterward, when Kim and Scott have moved back to the city.

Kim’s video footage of her neighborhood just before and during the storm, shot on a Hi-8 camcorder, provides the anchor for the beginning of the film. The dramatic arc of the storm’s landfall is witnessed by the viewer through the eyes of a resident in its path: talking with the neighbors under a blue sky; sheltering from sheets of rain on the porch; watching the water come up to the back door; watching from the attic as the water comes in through the windows; sharing fruit juice and food with neighbors in the attic; and shouting out an attic window to a neighbor swimming through stop-sign-high water, who’s using a punching bag as a flotation device to help ferry neighbors to higher ground. A clip of footage shot from a helicopter at the time of the storm is spliced in, showing the overwhelmed levees of the Ninth Ward, three blocks away from Kim and Scott’s house.

The vintage news coverage interwoven throughout the film provides a contextualizing counterpoint to Kim and Scott’s story as they assume places in front of the camera; simultaneously, their story works as a powerful antidote to the coverage of the hurricane as seen from above, lorded over by pundits. The viewer hears the story of the storm, and the story of a city chronically afflicted by poverty cheek by jowl with its chipper tourist industry, from those who have lived it.

The viewer follows Kim partway into an uninspected house in which there lies the body of one of her neighbors, two weeks after the storm, while outside National Guardsmen appear to loll in the street. The viewer hears Scott tell the story of being directed to a nearby Naval base by the Coast Guard to seek shelter for displaced neighborhood residents; once there, guards cocked their guns at the crowd. (The viewer then witnesses guards at the Naval base, being interviewed, deny this.)

Throughout the film, Kim comes across as a confident woman and leader, and Scott as a loving and supportive husband unthreatened by her strength. This would be a refreshing depiction in any film, but is especially remarkable given the extreme circumstances under which Kim and Scott share their story with the filmmakers. In an interview with Richard Roeper included in the DVD, director Tia Lessin says, “You’re looking up at [Kim and Scott] most of the film, which I think is beautiful, because that’s not how the media portrays people… metaphorically, we really tried to make a film that looked up to Kimberly and Scott.” Certainly, they’ve succeeded.

Written by: Kaja Katamay, November 20th 2009

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuilt and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:09:00 +0000

By Robert D. Bullard, Beverly Wright

Westview Press

Hurricane Katrina was one of those events that it was impossible not to be affected by because the images we all watched on our televisions and in the newspapers were so horrible. There was a sense of shock that U.S. citizens could be treated so poorly in their own country. Yet this outrage seems to have faded along with the general public’s memory of the storm.

Hurricane Katrina will forever alter the course of history in New Orleans and the life paths of thousands of families from the region. Bullard and Wright’s set of essays, Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, begins to make sense of the government policies that allowed New Orleans to flood, as well as post-Katrina efforts to rebuild the city and region. This collection is a reminder that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in New Orleans, particularly in poor and African American communities, which have suffered disproportionately.

The twelve essays that make up the book are broken into four sections, encompassing the challenges of racialized place, health and environment post-Katrina, equitable rebuilding and recovery and policy choices for social change. Essay topics range from disparities in access to transportation to environmental contaminants after the hurricane. The most powerful aspect of the book is that it sheds light on the fact that Hurricane Katrina was only partly a natural disaster, which was substantially exacerbated by the way that government and society as a whole chose to (not) respond.

The authors argue that the lack of preparedness and dismal response to victims of Hurricane Katrina are profoundly impacted by race and class. The essays force the reader to ask themselves again and again, “What would have happened if New Orleans was full of predominantly wealthy white people?”

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina isn’t exactly an easy or light-hearted read, but it is full of important information that will be of particular interest to people interested in the theoretical importance of the concept of place, as well as anyone interested in better understanding environmental justice and racial disparities.

Written by: Liz Simmons, July 20th 2009

The Last Single Woman in America

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:14:00 +0000

By Cindy Guidry

Plume

Cindy Guidry is a single woman in her forties living in Los Angeles. The people in her life insist on reacting to her lack of husband and children as though it were a catastrophe. She begins writing a series of personal essays after losing her job as a Hollywood studio executive. She finds herself questioning her choices, her motives, and her identity. The essays span several years, detailing failed relationships and other fiascos. Her life is populated with bizarre personalities—her bleak Canadian neighbor Tomas, an obsessive compulsive pseudo-boyfriend she refers to as “The Viking,” and her parents, who have been separated for twenty years, but who are too close to ever consider an actual divorce. There’s plenty of dating-related humiliation, sex talk, and of course, Hollywood-bashing.

Two of the best essays deal with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Guidry grew up in New Orleans, and her parents are still living there when disaster strikes. The first floor of her mother’s house floods, and Guidry invites her mother to stay with her temporarily. Guidry has always suspected that she is not her mother’s favorite child, and living in close quarters eventually leads her to ask her mother point blank, “Did you or did you not have sex with a leprechaun in 1967?” There’s a delicate balance at work in these personal narratives between realism and absurdity that produces laugh-out-loud hilarity. Guidry seems to be fully aware of her own ridiculousness while writing about her veterinarian (“The Cat Whisperer”) or trying to kick Dave Matthews out of her car before he discovers that her CD changer contains nothing but Dave Matthews CDs.

Guidry invites her readers to laugh at her neuroses and her tendencies toward self-sabotage. Unfortunately, her self-criticism lacks bite, and the comedy occasionally gets lost in pages of overwrought abstract analysis. In essays like “Men Are the New Women,” and “Future Ex-Husband,” she reveals her ambivalence about changing gender roles and claims feminism is at least partially responsible for her inability to find a life partner. These remarks feel tired, and certainly don’t add anything new to the discussion of the supposed “gender wars.” Ultimately, her book is like her obsessive love for Dave Matthews—there’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but it’s not exactly unique.

Written by: Kellie Powell, April 8th 2009

Submerged: Tales from the Basin

admin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:18:00 +0000

Edited by Lauren Gonzalez

StepSister Press

“We’re not popsicles; we’re people,” writes Leslie Gonzalez, one of the contributors to Submerged: Tales from the Basin, a prose and poetry collection about hair and how this physical extension of women’s auras complicates and confirms our place in this life.

While reading the eloquent pieces contributed by various writers to create this book that benefits victims of Hurricane Katrina, I was reminded of my own hair, and how my opinion of it has been influenced by my connection, or disconnection, to who I am.

In junior high, I would start my bedtime prayers with the hope that my hair would be okay in the morning (followed by ending the war in Vietnam and bringing Patty Heart home unharmed). As I read Submerged, this memory surfaced along with the realization that I was really praying that the adolescent me would be okay, among the chattering students of the various—and in the '70s—often feuding groups that populated our school and the struggling outside world.

Editor Lauren Gonzalez pulled together these works, asking authors to focus on the theme of hair, and what emerges is a commonality between all women, not just those who have contributed to the book. We have all blessed and cursed the days when our hair meets society’s standards, and felt the ethnocentrism of hair prejudice, even within a specific cultural group. The writers have all come to a point of acceptance to be who they are internally, making this book an excellent choice to share with anyone who is currently experiencing a “bad hair cycle.”

The poem "The Bazaz Curse" by Ellen Hagan, speaks of hair that’s “a puff of awkward,” a place that everyone has been whether their age is in single or double digits. I especially want to mention "The Jewish Girl Dreams of Hitchcock Hair," a standout piece that can work on stage as well as page. Author Miriam Webb’s final point, “It’s the tragedy of the relentlessly beautiful/to be relentlessly pursued,” sums up not only the dilemma of film heroines, but the predicament of anyone society dubs “beautiful.” The shiksappeal (referencing the television show Seinfeld) of “manageable hair” resonates throughout the poem reminding us that we must accept banes and blessings when we are defined as lovely. There’s always someone in pursuit, and it could be our inner critic, out to get us. The connection we have to our hair and how it projects who we are to the world is explored in this book in an accessible fashion that anyone can relate to.

Written by: Cheryl Ellis, March 28th 2009

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Directed by Spike Lee

HBO Films

Spike Lee's 2006 documentary When the Levees Broke is no small commitment—though clocking in at four hours, its length isn't what devastates. The film passes shockingly quickly, translating a vague sense of unease in the viewer into heavy understanding. Lee has accomplished a brilliant and agonizing oral history of a great betrayal of human rights, democracy and good governance.

A requiem is meant to ease the spirits of the dead. If film can speak for human pain, When the Levees Broke sings and screams and sobs. The setup of each domino is carefully described. As they topple we watch their force bottleneck into the same spot. All of a sudden what was reported "unavoidable," "overlooked" and "accidental" seems obvious and premeditated. Lee lifts a veil of illusion from the twin juggernauts of racist, indifferent governance and institutional violence. Viewers become witnesses.

We witness survivors prevail to a bridge out of the city. We watch footage of them meeting with police who threaten to shoot anyone who crosses, echoing similar events on other Southern bridges. To those ignorant of race dynamics in the United States, the suspicion of many Ninth Ward residents that the levees were intentionally blown may sound conspiracy theory-esque until viewers learn that twice before, exactly that has happened. When Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco says, "They have M16s and are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill, and I expect they will," she is talking about a military force sent to protect the private property of businesses from people struggling to live.

When the Levees Broke is beautifully composed and bare of rhetoric. There is no voice-over narration. The story interweaves images and sounds from the disaster with the testimonies and art of survivors. We hear wind pound on the roof of the Superdome. We watch refugees fight despair with song on the third day of oppressive heat, death and filth without aid. And while the movie is profoundly intimate, it is not voyeuristic, paternalistic or exploitative. Its entire body resounds with integrity.

Contextually implicit in Lee's requiem is an imperative to action. He draws out running themes, reveals why the city's agony was both inevitable and entirely preventable, brings criminality to light and spotlights the perpetrators. United States viewers remain governed by those who allowed the atrocities to occur. Under democracy, this spells change or complicity.

Written by: Amory Ballantine, March 12th 2007