‘Fight for Home’ offers insight into post-Katrina New Orleans

From January 2006, author Daniel Wolff and film producer Jonathan Demme visited a poor, predominantly African-American area of New Orleans every six months or so to record its progress in rebuilding after Hurricane Kristina devastated the city. They purposely waited until newspaper coverage had moved on.

They found, just for openers, of the 27,000 homes the municipalities examined, only six were habitable. By 2006, there were 73,000 families in small government trailers, waiting for promised government funds to rebuild.

Suicides doubled; thieves stripped of everything left; police seldom visited and were uncooperative even as there were more of them in relation to the people who had not moved away. Owners of destroyed homes sometimes waited months for government trailers, and when they came, they were filled with formaldehyde.

The government ignored the area while developers waited in the wings to rebuild the ninth ward near the river in a different image: get rid of the African-Americans in that section and make the area into “boutique city” with parks and gardens and high rise buildings – for white people, of course. Rents were rising, houses condemned.

By 2007, only one of the seven hospitals there had been was functional; only 15 percent of the houses in the district had power. The Catholic Diocese went out of its way to close predominantly African-American Catholic churches; in predominantly-white Catholic churches; African-Americans were segregated. There were no stores in the neighborhood, no business section, no schools – only charters.

This bleak picture is given to the reader mostly by way of conversations between the real persons in the book, known generally by their first names, and with the author/observer. It’s through these conversations and comments the reader gets to know the area.

The principal character – Mel, a recovered drug addict – spent three years on the street. He is now a religious man and head of a drug recovery institution helping other men – and eventually women – recover their lives. It’s exhausting work.

On top of his work, he and his wife came home to find a fire had gutted their recently-renewed home. His faith was so strong, they hardly waited before beginning construction again.

The mayor was put out when Brad Pitt came to their area to help them raise money, because he encouraged people to develop their homes and surrounding areas on their own – putting expensive developers on hold.

It’s a unique way of getting readers familiar with an area, having everyone talk to each other or to the author who went around with them every six months or so, putting in the occasional – usually shocking – statistic or historical fact. When it’s all put together the reader gets a three-dimensional view of the way the broken levies of 2005 affected one group in the poorer part of New Orleans. While there is some bitterness, there is also courage, good will, inventiveness and generosity.

The book is also a scholarly reference with notes, bibliography and index.

Book info:
The Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back
By Daniel Wolff
Bloomsbury, $26

Posted by Rae Eastman on December 27, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry