Human tragedy is not at the forefront of The Big Uneasy, Harry Shearer's examination of what happened in New Orleans in August 2005. Shearer, the actor, voiceover artist, musician—he has plenty of other jobs too—says at the outset of his film that it is not a hurricane story. The flooding of New Orleans was a [...]
In her most recent book, Blood Dazzler, Patricia Smith tracks Hurricane Katrina’s emotional and physical devastation, minute-by-minute through New Orleans. She takes on the voices of the city’s individual residents, and her evocation of the city’s destruction is raw, spiritual, and heartbreaking. Smith, a four-time National Poetry Slam champion, reads from her work and converses [...]
in which the author discusses three recent non-fiction works in re: Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina was bad. Real bad. The Katrina body count (<2000) can't compare with 9/11 (3000ish) or the War in Iraq (5130), but she (colloquially, Katrina is a "she," no?) reinvented the Gulf Coast by destroying it, sparking the greatest population shift since [...]
