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The yellow house
by Sarah M. Broom
Describes the author’s upbringing in a New Orleans East shotgun house as the unruly 13th child of a widowed mother, tracing a century of family history and the impact of class, race and Hurricane Katrina on her sense of identity.
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Strangers in their own land : anger and mourning on the American right by Arlie Russell HochschildIn Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country--a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets toknow people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets--among them a Tea Party activist whose town has been swallowed by a sinkhole caused by a drilling accident--people whose concerns are actually ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children. Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests. Instead, Hochschild finds lives ripped apart by stagnant wages, a loss of home, an elusive American dream--and political choices and views that make sense in the context of their lives. Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help us understand what it feels like to live in "red" America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seemto benefit most from "liberal" government intervention abhor the very idea?
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Katrina : after the Flood
by Gary Rivlin
Tracing the stories of New Orleanians from all walks of life as they confront the aftermath of one of the great tragedies of our age, an investigative journalist revisits Hurricane Katrina's immediate damage; the city of New Orleans' efforts to rebuild itself; and the storm's lasting effects on the psychic, racial and social fabric of one of this nation's great cities.
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The Turner house
by Angela Flournoy
Learning that after a half-century of family life that their house on Detroit's East Side is worth only a fraction of its mortgage, the members of the Turner family gather to reckon with their pasts and decide the house's fate.
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Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
by Sheri Fink
A Pulitzer Prize-winning doctor, reporter and author of War Hospital reconstructs five days at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina destroyed its generators to reveal how caregivers were forced to make life-and-death decisions without essential resources, an experience that raised key issues about practitioner responsibilities and end-of-life care.
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Men we reaped : a memoir
by Jesmyn Ward
A National Book Award winner recounts the loss of five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men, sharing her experiences of living through the dying as she searches through answers in her community.
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Salvage the bones : a novel
by Jesmyn Ward
Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.
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Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers
Documents the story of a long-time New Orleans resident who was forced to stay behind during Hurricane Katrina while the rest of his family evacuated, describing how he spent days after the storm traveling by canoe to feed abandoned animals before he was inexplicably arrested.
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Where the line bleeds
by Jesmyn Ward
A tale set on the post-Katrina Gulf Coast finds the bond between twins Joshua and Christophe strained by the latter's decision to sell drugs, a situation that is further complicated by the returns of the mother who had abandoned them and predatory addict father.
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