Full Description
Standing in the Need presents an intimate account of an African American family's ordeal after Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm struck, this family of one hundred fifty members lived in the bayou communities of St. Bernard Parish just outside New Orleans. Rooted there like the wild red iris of the coastal wetlands, the family had gathered for generations to cook and share homemade seafood meals, savor conversation, and refresh their interconnected lives.In this lively narrative, Katherine Browne weaves together voices and experiences from eight years of post-Katrina research. Her story documents the heartbreaking struggles to remake life after everyone in the family faced ruin. Cast against a recovery landscape managed by outsiders, the efforts of family members to help themselves could get no traction; outsiders undermined any sense of their control over the process. In the end, the insights of the story offer hope. Written for a broad audience and supported by an array of photographs and graphics, Standing in the Need offers readers an inside view of life at its most vulnerable.
Contents
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsFiguresIntroductionPart I. Shock Wave1. When They Say Go2. The Culture Broker3. Not Just Any Red BeansPart II. Wave of Trouble4. Ruin and Relief5. Trial by Trailer6. Bayou Speech and Bayou Style7. Whose Road Home? 8. Almost to the GroundPart III. Wave of Reckoning9. Settling10. Call to Race11. By and ByCodaAppendix. MethodologyNotesBibliographyAbout the Author and Series EditorIndex
