HypheNationAn Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse

ListenHear
LoudTalking
TalkingLoud

Tracy Blandon Allen

Martha Carey

Futaba Fujikawa

Natasha McPherson

Table of Contents

As an historian of New Orleans’ Afro-Creole society, culture and community, returning to the city for the first time after hurricane Katrina was both psychologically devastating and emotionally uplifting. I was not prepared for the shock I felt upon seeing the destruction firsthand. I thought because I had watched CNN from the moment the hurricane hit New Orleans and continued to watch for five days straight in complete disbelief and because I had kept up with the news stories and images through newspapers and online journal sources that I was prepared to see what Katrina had done to my beloved city. I was wrong. I tried to capture the devastation on film, but as I began taking pictures I realized that there isn’t a camera lens wide enough, an angle sharp enough, to trully illustrate the intensity and magnitude of the damage left in Katrina’s wake.

was also disheartened and at times outraged to see the continuing glaring disparity between New Orleans’ uptown and downtown communities even during these moments of rebirth and renewal. Uptown and downtown New Orleans divides at Canal Street. Uptown is considered historically more “American” with the Garden district and palatial homes on St. Charles Avenue, while downtown has a more European influence with the French Quarter and its Spanish-style ironwork. There is also a racial and socio-economic divide between uptown and downtown communities with most white New Orleanians living uptown and most downtown residents are black, many of whom are impoverished.

Although uptown was not hit as hard by the hurricane as the downtown neighborhoods, it appears as though there is a much bigger push to reopen businesses, rebuild homes and establishments uptown than there is downtown. Many downtown communities still do not have electricity. Throughout the seventh, eighth, and ninth wards there are stop signs in place of dysfunctional traffic lights. Many residents sit on their porches until night falls because there are no lights in their homes. Clean up crews have yet to pick up piles of waste that have been properly sorted according to city regulations and left in front of residences in downtown communities, leaving these neighborhoods to look like a war zone. As I drove through the downtown neighborhoods, becoming teary-eyed at the sight of mothers walking with their children through heaps of