Overview
Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported—and misreported—by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie’s observation that, “Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is.” This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie’s formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie’s rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.
Full Product Details
Author: Mary Ruth Marotte ,
Glenn Jellenik ,
Joseph Donica ,
Florian Freitag
Publisher: Lexington Books
Imprint: Lexington Books
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.367kg
ISBN: 9781498508803
ISBN 10: 1498508804
Pages: 262
Publication Date: 31 August 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
This book shows us why we need cultural criticism: the x-codes of Hurricane Katrina take on life as polysemous performance. Through careful attention, disasters' long reverberations yield their sad and all too familiar truths. -- Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College
Author Information
Mary Ruth Marotte is associate professor of English and director of graduate studies in English at the University of Central Arkansas. Glenn Jellenik is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Central Arkansas.
