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Lädt ... Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coastvon Natasha Trethewey
Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. Pulitzer Prize winning poet writes soaring and thoughtful nonfiction on the meaning of Hurricane Katrina, its impact specifically on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the meaning of memorialization and erasure of natural disaster, woven with memoir about the storm's impact on her family and on the area where the storm made landfall. The fact that material is often introduced in prose and then repeated as poetry made it twice as powerful and gave me a chance to savor the true impact of the author's reflections in this fine multi-genre work. ( ) A beautiful meditation on place, community, family, and class, and a heart-breaking exploration of all the different kinds of destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I particularly appreciated the way Trethewey wove poems and letters from her brother into her prose. Natasha Trethewey, the newly selected Poet Laureate of the U.S. and current professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, wrote this book, a combination of memoir, history and elegy, about her family and other residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although the eye of the storm made landfall in Louisiana, the brunt of the winds and the associated coastal flooding was felt in cities such as Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. Over 90% of these towns were flooded, and nearly all private residences and public buildings suffered moderate to severe damage. At least 235 people were killed in the state as a result, and the region continues to feel the effects of the storm seven years later. Natasha Trethewey grew up in North Gulfport, a mostly African-American portion of the city, from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. Although racial segregation and discrimination were formally outlawed by the time of her birth, its effects lingered in the Deep South for many years afterward, as many blacks continued to frequent stores owned by their neighbors and to employ local tradesmen. One of these men was her great-uncle Willie Dixon, known as "Son" to his family and neighbors, who used his earnings from his nightclub to repair, buy and sell rental properties in North Gulfport. Her younger brother Joe took over the family business after Uncle Son's death, and his story of steady success followed by devastation and tragedy is the central element of this book. Although federal funding was allocated to the residents of central and southern Mississippi, government officials and local politicians diverted much of it to the wealthier residents and the growing tourism and gambling industries, leaving behind many of the region's poorer residents, both black and white. Trethewey describes the mismanagement of the coastal wetland by local developers, and how it contributed to the disastrous flooding. People employed as service workers by the gambling industry and in construction suffered mightily, as they lost their jobs and their homes in less than 48 hours. Many got their jobs back, but property owners increased their rents substantially, leaving many of them unable to pay their bills. Local businessmen, particularly in North Gulfport, were also adversely affected, due to ordinances that permitted the city to take over their land if their owners decided to rebuild their damaged properties. Trethewey occasionally refers to an unforgettable quote by fellow Southern writer Flannery O'Connor to describe the feelings she and her fellow Mississippians shared in the aftermath of Katrina: "Where you came from is gone. Where you thought you were going to never was there. And where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." She also uses her own formidable skill as a poet to tell the stories of those whose lives have been ruined by the storm, such as Tamara Jones in her poem Believer: The house is in need of repair, but is— She closes the book on a hopeful note, despite the serious trouble her brother finds himself in, and the reader is left with the sense that the survivors of Katrina will fight back against the odds and reclaim their livelihood and the heritage that defines the proud state of Mississippi. Beyond Katrina is a powerful testament and statement by this uniquely gifted writer, whose talent will now receive wider attention in her new position as America's poet laureate. I look forward to her upcoming poetry collection Thrall, which will explore her relationship with her white father, a professor of poetry at Hollins College, and her experiences as an interracial child and young woman. Zeige 3 von 3 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
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Beyond Katrina is poet Natasha Trethewey's very personal profile of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and of the people there whose lives were forever changed by hurricane Katrina. Trethewey spent her childhood in Gulfport, where much of her mother's extended family, including her younger brother, still lives. As she worked to understand the devastation that followed the hurricane, Trethewey found inspiration in Robert Penn Warren's book Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South, in which he spoke with southerners about race in the wake of the Brown decision, capturing an event of wide impact from multiple points of view. Weaving her own memories with the experiences of family, friends, and neighbors, Trethewey traces the erosion of local culture and the rising economic dependence on tourism and casinos. She chronicles decades of wetland development that exacerbated the destruction and portrays a Gulf Coast whose citizens--particularly African Americans--were on the margins of American life well before the storm hit. Most poignantly, Trethewey illustrates the destruction of the hurricane through the story of her brother's efforts to recover what he lost and his subsequent incarceration. Renowned for writing about the idea of home, Trethewey's attempt to understand and document the damage to Gulfport started as a series of lectures at the University of Virginia that were subsequently published as essays in the Virginia Quarterly Review. For Beyond Katrina, Trethewey has expanded this work into a narrative that incorporates personal letters, poems, and photographs, offering a moving meditation on the love she holds for her childhood home. A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)818.6Literature English (North America) Authors, American and American miscellany 21st CenturyKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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