The Houston Survivor Project: An Introduction
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The Houston Survivor Project:An Introduction
Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston is the first large-scale project, anywhere, in which the survivors of a major disaster have taken the lead in documenting it. Our goal is to voice, as intimately as possible, the experiences and reflections of those displaced to Houston by the two major hurricanes that pounded the Gulf Coast in August and September of 2005. Survivors receive training and pay to record fellow survivors' storm stories, their memories of lost neighborhoods, and their ongoing struggles to build new communities in exile. The paychecks earned by survivors do indeed help fill an obvious need; their training and documentary experience enhance their prospects for building new careers. But the heart of the project is stories: stories told by survivors, to survivors, on the survivors' own terms. We see in these stories the seeds of recovery: it is our conviction that to survive is not merely to secure food, clothing, and the essentials of daily life, but to help shape one's future by taking control of one's own story. While media treatments of the survivors have too often depicted criminals or at best victims, the voices of the survivors have portrayed selfless friends, compassionate strangers, loving neighbors, and, above all, heroes.
The survivor-interviewers now taking part in the project—as well as the voices they record—represent the entire range of locales leveled by Katrina and Rita from Mobile Bay, Alabama to Beaumont, Texas. The interviewers and storytellers embrace the enormous range and complexity of New Orleans's neighborhoods, comprising, among others, Anglos, Cajuns, Central Americans, Central American Creoles, French American Creoles, Italian Americans, Latinos, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese Americans. Because storytellers are encouraged to speak in the language most comfortable to them, interviews have been recorded in four languages: English, Garifuna, Spanish, and Vietnamese. But because this issue of Callaloo commemorates New Orleans, the interviewers and storytellers—Henry Armstrong, Nicole Eugene, and Dorothy Griffin—whose words are found in this section are all natives of the wounded city.1 [End Page 1504]
[Pat Jasper and Carl Lindahl, co-directors of the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston project, may be reached via email at hurricaneshtown@aol.com]2
Pat Jasper, an independent folklorist, is co-director (with Carl Lindahl) of the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston project. She is the founding director of Texas Folklife Resources.
Carl Lindahl, an American Folklore Society fellow, is the Martha Gano Houston Research Professor of English at the University of Houston. His most recent book is American Folktales from the Collections of the Library of Congress (2004). He is co-director of the "Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston" project, which is discussed in this issue of Callaloo.
Notes
1. Parts of the following text appeared earlier in slightly different form on the website of the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston project—www.kartrinaandrita.org—and are reproduced here with the project's permission.
2. The Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston project is a collaboration of the Texas Commission on the Arts, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and the University of Houston. The project also receives support from, and works in close collaboration with, Houston FotoFest and FotoFest's Literacy through Photography Program, The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art Foundation, the Houston Institute for Culture, Project Row Houses, and a number of other organizations. Our work has been made possible through a major grant from the Houston Endowment. [End Page 1505]
