Changing the Narrative and Mapping Our Stories

I just finished The Yellow House early this morning and so many thoughts are swirling in my head that I have to come back to my blog to process these feelings. Sorry I've been absent from the blog, but I have been reading and sharing my favorite books on another platform. Yes, I've been cheating on this blog at Instagram. Follow me and see almost everything I'm reading there @hatrireads. I'll edit these thoughts on this amazing book for that platform as well.

So, The Yellow House by Sarah M. Bloom is definitely hard to describe - more than a memoir, more than a Katrina story, more than a story about place. It's all those things and more. Sarah, also known to her family as Monique or Mo, Broom uses the metaphor of a map to describe her place. Most significant to her story is the fact that New Orleans East is left off most maps of New Orleans. Just as the Yellow House that she grew up in has been wiped off her street, the short end of Wilson Street in New Orleans East.  She starts and ends this book with the image of her brother Carl, also called Rabbit, sitting alone on the lot of the house that used to hold her life. And her father. Underlying the story of the house is the story of her father, Simon Broom, who died six months after she was born. When the house is demolished, without the family's consent, in the aftermath of Katrina, she felt like she'd lost her father all over again. 

The book is the history of that house, the history of her family, the history of New Orleans, and the story of America, according to Broom. I had the delight of hearing her speak at her book launch in New Orleans a few weeks ago. She read to a standing room crowd of 200 outside Garden District Bookshop. After the reading, she was interviewed by Marcus Carlos Ruffin, author of another new favorite of mine, We Cast a Shadow, and also product of New Orleans East. When asked about the place they were both born, Broom said, "New Orleans East is off the map, literally." She said she sees being a writer as similar to being a cartographer, "drawing a map of the place and the people I love." She added, "My life's work is to revise existing maps. Fill in the blank spaces. It's sad that more people aren't writing about these communities."

In this her first book, Broom uses language and description in a masterful way. She writes: "I had no home. Mine had fallen all the way down. I understood that the place I never wanted to claim had, in fact, been containing me. We own what belongs to us whether we claim it or not." Earlier in the book, she writes about finally getting eyeglasses when she was 10 years old and she compares that to the "ways we can choose not to see things." She wants to "keep her glasses on and look directly at the world. I want to be real about what the world looks like and report on it." 

Trained as a journalist, Broom was called the "human tape recorder" by her family as a child.  She has been taking notes, interviewing her family and researching her town ever since. This book was created over the last 20 years of her life and she has drawn on a variety of sources to tell this story. Her family is probably the biggest source for this and she relied on her siblings and her mother to tell her their history. As the baby of her mother's 13 children, Broom has to use the voices of the others that came before her to tell their history.  Her mother, Ivory Mae is central to the story. Her determination to own her own home,  to raise her children to be respectful, to be loving and gentle shines through every page. Most of Broom's family was at the reading I attended and at the end I got her mother to sign my book, which is really her story. 

Part of the reason Broom wrote the book was to put Katrina (or the Water as she called it) in context. "It's not the only thing," she says about Katrina. She calls it "one of many official negligences...Katrina can't define us all." She said that if she only told about the Katrina part then she would not be telling her whole story. Her story and her family's story encompasses more than that one event. She wants to tell about the "little moments that make up a life."  She added,  "The story I love is all the areas no one is talking about."

I've been thinking a lot about the stories that haven't been told since the New York Times released its 1619 Project, observing the 400th anniversary of slavery. The print publication also includes lesson plans and more educational materials to deepen understanding of this central part of American history as well as share untold stories. I highly recommend the accompanying podcast. Host Nikole Hannah-Jones tells the ways her story and the story of all black Americans has been ignored even though it is central to our shared history as a nation. 

I also want to the opening of an exhibit here in New Orleans at Newcomb Art Gallery last week. The American Dream Denied: The New Orleans Residents of Gordon Plaza Seek Relocation is a mixed media exhibition organized by the Critical Visualization and Media Lab at Tulane University.  Gordon Plaza is a housing development built in the lat 1970s on top of the former Agriculture Street Landfill in the Upper Ninth Ward. The "beautiful subdivision" was created to provide affordable houses so African Americans could realize the so-called American Dream. These toxic homes were deemed a Superfund site but residents were not given the opportunity to sell their homes back. Through the People's Assembly of New Orleans and other groups, the remaining 52 residents are telling their story and asking for a fair and fully-funded relocation. The exhibit amplifies these unheard stories. We need to hear these stories and put these places and people back on the map of our minds.

Fight the Stupids: Support All Your Local Book Shops

I am happy to report here that Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans is alive and well. The reports of her death are greatly exaggerated. The venerated 50 year old shop is showing her age, but still ticking. My brother and I visited Maple Street last Friday as part of our quest to visit all the independent bookshops in New Orleans in one day. Luckily for us, but unfortunately for the city, there are only three. But three independent bookstores (all in roughly the same area of the city) are not bad, considering that the much, much larger city where I currently reside has only two. But I digress. Maple Street owners have decided to stay open based on customer response. Lately all the old faithfuls and some new converts have been flocking to the literary institution, which first opened its doors in 1964, to buy books. According to manager/owner Gladin Scott, Christmas sales exceeded expectations and they will stay open at least another year. So, dear readers, don't stop to read the rest of this post, get yourself to Maple Street Bookstore in New Orleans and buy some books. They take book exchanges and have a great selection of used books as well as a fairly extensive inventory (for a bookstore that almost closed) of new books of all types. On the down side, I am thinking they are still having trouble paying their electric bill because it was COLD in there. It was a chilly day in New Orleans and even colder in the bookstore. Thankfully, there were space heaters which helped a lot. So if you buy all your books from Maple Street, they might be able to turn up the heat.

To backtrack, my brother was visiting New Orleans from the Bay Area and we decided to visit all the independent bookstores in the city on our day together. He has fond memories of driving three hours from our hometown in our mother's station wagon during the late sixties and early seventies to visit Maple Street. Once there, he spent many solitary hours exploring the inventory and discovering such treasures as the poetry of Gary Synder before driving home later the same day with a car filled with books. Every time he returns to New Orleans, he re-visits his "first" bookstore, Maple Street. He was alarmed to hear they were closing earlier this year, so we decided to check the pulse of the city by stopping in Maple Street and the two other bookstores.  

We started at Octavia Books, the newest kid on the block in terms of New Orleans book shops. Located uptown near Whole Foods and a bustling section of Magazine Street, the bookstore opened in 2000 and was the first to re-open after Katrina in 2005. Octavia has become a favorite of mine as I mentioned in that earlier blog post. But on this visit with my brother, we found the recommendations a bit hollow. The employee who helped us based his suggestions on what was selling well, which was helpful, but not as rich as if he had read the books himself. At each store my brother asked for a literary page turner, in the vein of The Buried Giant. A tricky question if you haven't read that wonderful book by Kazuo Ishiguro. At Octavia, the book recommendations were weak. But it was a still a pleasant visit. I came away with Celeste Ny's Everything I Never Told You. The store has a relaxed, literary vibe and is around the corner from my current favorite breakfast spot, Toast. So you can't bet that! 

Next we drove over to the nearby Tulane University area and visited Maple Street as previously described. We didn't linger because of the cold, but the recommendations were sound and I bought two books there (because... SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE!). I had to buy Elaine Ferrante's first book in her series because it is apparently flying off the shelves in all three stores we visited. This is a literary novel, not on the bestseller list, that is doing quite well in New Orleans.  I also bought the only Ellen Gilchrist book that I don't already own (because...Ellen Gilchrist).

Last, we went up St. Charles to the Garden District Book Shop on Washington. This little gem has been around for 38 years and was the busiest of the three bookstores we visited. Customers were in and out. Books were being sold and discussed. The bookseller that helped us had read the books she recommended and very enthusiastic.  We lingered awhile and my brother purchased Station Eleven (which I enjoyed last summer). He almost bought the Salman Rushdie but decided to wait until it was in paperback (I don't now if I can wait that long). Garden District Book Shop has survived the opening and later closing of the big box bookstore Borders a few blocks down on St. Charles Street. The vitality of this shop is probably due partly to its location in The Rink and because New Orleanians tend to support local retailers, especially beloved book shops. Visiting all the bookstores in New Orleans was a perfect way to spend a chilly day in the city.  After that, we drove by all three of the Confederate monuments that the city is removing, but that is another story for another day.

Reunion with Old Friends

I feel like I just spent time with old friends after completing Ellen Gilchrist's most recent short story collection, Acts of God.  Initially, I was a bit disappointed in the book. Some of the stories felt a bit like fluff stuff. For instance, "Collateral" - about a single mother in the National Guard who helps out after Katrina - seems too much like chick lit.  But by the time I got to "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," and saw Anna Hand's niece had a starring role in this story about terrorist attacks in London, I felt right at home.  And in "The Dogs," I got to hear from good ole Rhonda Manning, who is up to her old tricks. "The Dissolution of the Myelin Sheath" was a beautiful story about a woman taking her life in her own hands. "A Love Story" was a gem of a short, short story. And it just got better with the final two stories in the collection - "Jumping Off Bridges into Clean Water"  and "Hopedale: A History in Four Acts." All the stories in this book are centered on people dealing with natural and unnatural forces which are beyond their control - hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, disease, death - all acts of God.  And Ellen Gilchrist's unique voice - down to earth, honest and so real - make each one of these situations feel genuine and true. The stories feel like they are being told on the front porch.

Since finishing this book, I've been thinking a lot about why I adore the writing of Ellen Gilchrist. First, I think she is a master of the short story. Second, her characters are accessible. They are my people. One character in "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" who was a Jackson, MIssissippi society lady said, "I'm not interesting. I'm a cliche inside a self-fulfilling prophecy inside a stereotype." Whoa, Ellen nailed it with that line. I know that woman and many others like her.  Not only does Ellen Gilchrist write about my people, she also writes about my places - Jackson, New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Delta. Her characters populate my world and I feel like I'm with old friends.  Ellen Gilchrist's books are among the very short list of books I actually re-read. I relate to her characters even now, 31 years after I started reading them. I received my first Ellen Gilchrist book, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, from my dear friend Beth in 1983. I guess you could say Ellen's characters and I have grown into middle age together.

Choices of the Heart

A few weeks ago when Hurricane Isaac was roaring toward New Orleans, I had a strange mix of feelings. I felt regret that I wasn’t there. I missed the adrenaline rush of preparing for evacuation, which I did many times in my years on the Gulf Coast.  I also felt a sense of relief that I was in the orderly, calm city of Houston. At the same time, I felt guilty that I wasn’t in New Orleans for the chaos and recovery after a hurricane. I was conflicted. I guess the strongest feeling was sadness that I wasn’t there to be a part of it all. I decided to re-read one of my favorite books about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

First, let me tell you that I love New Orleans like I love my closest friends. I lived in New Orleans for seven years. I was a transplant to the Crescent City, but I had been attending Jazz Fest and visiting the city since I was young. New Orleans captured me during those years and has never let me go. Part of my heart is forever in New Orleans. When I drive into that city, the smell overwhelms me.  It’s an unforgettable mixture of chicory coffee emanating from the Folgers’ Coffee roasting plant on the east side of the French Quarter and the muddy-smelling river water. That smell makes my heart beat a little faster.

The novel, City of Refuge, is both a praise song to the city I love and an editorial about the travesty of Hurricane Katrina. Author Tom Piazza spins of a tale of two different families experiences of the hurricane that devastated the city of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. But the devastation of Katrina was not a natural disaster, instead a man-made tragedy. Piazza reminds us that we must never forget the failure on the part of the government and politicians to adequately improve the levies surrounding the city.  The poorest neighborhood of the city, the Ninth Ward, was destroyed with 15 feet of water in some places.  Almost 80 percent of the city received some damage. The city shut down and its residents left – many of them for the first time – and re-located all over America.

The book starts in the heat of that late summer of 2005 with two New Orleans families – one black and one white – facing the storm that inevitably will change their lives.  The families never really meet except by a chance encounter on the first pages of the book, but their lives are intertwined in the storm that will unite the community. The black family is led by SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower lives and works in the lower Ninth Ward. He was born and raised in that community – only leaving for his time in Vietnam. He is a good man, worried about his young nephew and the boy’s mother, his sister. Craig Donaldson, the head of the white family, is not a native New Orleanian. He and his wife, Alice, came to the city by choice from the Midwest.  Craig fell in love with New Orleans on several visits to the city. He was a journalist –primarily a music writer.

Craig’s narrative sounds a lot like Tom Piazza’s story.  The author of City of Refuge had been fascinated by New Orleans most of his life. He finally made it New Orleans for the first time in 1987 for Jazz Fest. He was 31. He had been planning to make the trip for years but had put it off for one reason or another.  He said, “somehow a switch clicked inside me and some spirit of the place entered me.” He fell in love with the city.  He didn’t move there until 1994 and he quickly became a fixture on the literary and music scene of the Crescent City.

Tom Piazza is a Long Island, NY native with an “old-school writer’s resume of ambition mixed with odd jobs, false starts, hard knocks.” After graduation from Williams College, he moved to NYC, already with a good deal of experience in writing, mainly about the blues and jazz music.  Fast forward to Katrina and Piazza’s evacuation to Missouri with his girlfriend. His publisher asked him to write something about the hurricane and Why New Orleans Matters spilled out of his soul in five weeks.  The book was written in response to House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s remarks that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt.

He says that City of Refuge also came from deep within and “insisted on being written.” After writing Why New Orleans Matters in so quickly after the hurricane and traveling around the country speaking about the city, he was burned out on talking about New Orleans. But in the spring of 2006, he had a writing residency in Virginia and while he was driving there the characters in COR began appearing in his mind.  He went on to write ten thousand words, as well as a complete synopsis of the novel, in his nine days of residency in Virginia. He knew then that the book would start about a week before Katrina and just after Mardi Gras six months later. He said he had never had a writing experience like that. “It was like having a high fever,” he said. He went on to complete the book in the next two years from several different places.

City of Refuge is a difficult book to read, yet one you cannot put down. The catastrophe of Katrina is placed along side two very realistic, very human stories. The theme of the book to me is one of hope. Tom Piazza honors the brave people of New Orleans who “comport themselves with a defiant grace when their lives have been pushed to the edge, and then over the edge.”  While it’s hard to relive the horrible images of death and destruction in our own country, Piazza wants us to remember and to cherish every day and honor life. He says at the end of the book, “You’re supposed to dance while you have the chance.”

The book is also about choices we all have to make. The main characters are both forced to leave the city during and after the storm and they both have to later decide whether to return. Piazza pointed out in an interview that everyone who is in New Orleans now had to make a choice to be there and it was not an automatic choice.  My husband and I had to decide whether to go back to New Orleans or not. We were not yet married at the time of the storm.  I lived in Pensacola and he lived in New Orleans. Even though his house wasn’t damaged, he had to rent a place in Baton Rouge because the city was not livable for at least two months after Katrina.  He went back in late October after the storm. However, eventually in late 2006, he chose to leave his adopted city because his young son and the boy’s mother, his ex-wife, had moved to Houston because of Katrina.  We then married and moved to Houston together. Like Craig, we had to choose family and relationships over the city that drew us in like a magnetic force.

We hope to return to New Orleans to live, just as I like to think Craig Donaldson, one of the main characters in COR, does eventually.  Because as SJ, the other main character, thinks when he finally goes back to his battered flooded home, “Here was a center, here was his heart.” This book captures the heart of New Orleans.

Truth is Stranger (& Sadder) Than Fiction

Last night I just finished a sad, but enjoyable, novel called The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.  The book is the complete history of a fictional English language newspaper published in Rome. The story of the paper is told through the voices of its journalists --  a sad, neurotic lot of people drawn to a dying profession. Each person has a distinctive voice and an engaging story to tell.  The book ends as you might expect in these last days of print newspapers. I am a former newspaper reporter and have taught college journalism. I care about the future of print journalism and I went to bed very sad last night over the demise of a fictional newspaper.

This morning I woke up to read in the New York Times about the layoffs at my beloved Times Picayune in New Orleans.  Just a few weeks ago, the Newhouse-owned paper announced that it would move to a three days a week publication.  It also announced a similar plan for its papers in Birmingham, Mobile, and Huntsville – all papers I have read throughout my life. Newhouse, now Advance.net, said they are focusing on “enhancing the digital product.” Sickening.

About half of the newsroom of the Times Picayune was laid off yesterday, including some very well known and award-winning columnists and reporters. The New York Times reported that by midday yesterday the newsroom was “almost as empty as the bottle of booze that someone had brought in.” It sounds just like the ending of The Imperfectionists. Sometimes the truth is sadder than fiction.