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  • Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the Crescent City and Beyond
  • Betty Sample
Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the Crescent City and Beyond. By D'Ann R. Penner and Keith C. Ferdinand. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009. 248 pp. Softbound, $20.00.

D'Ann Penner and Keith Ferdinand explore the private thoughts and lives of a group of African Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina in Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the Crescent City and Beyond. A foreword by former President Jimmy Carter written in December 2007 introduces the volume as more than a "retelling of the horrors of their tragedy" (xi). A native Southerner himself, the former president writes that it speaks to the "concerns, dreams, hopes, and unfulfilled promises experienced by the African American community" (xi). It is the sixteenth book in Palgrave Macmillan's Studies in Oral History series, a collection "designed to bring oral history interviews out of the archives and into the hands of students, educators, scholars, and the reading public" (xii).

Oral history transcripts of twenty-seven of D'Ann R. Penner's interviews, and the insight provided by co-author Keith C. Ferdinand's personal and professional relationships with the victims, answer some of the questions shouted at televisions worldwide as Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath unfolded before the eyes of a horrified world. "Why are they so angry?" "Why didn't they get out?" and "Why doesn't somebody do something?" are some of the questions at least partially addressed by this thought-provoking book. The authors chose the interviews from the 275 Penner conducted with Katrina survivors throughout the South between September 2005 and August 2008. Not merely a narrative of perseverance [End Page 312] and survival under extreme circumstances, the book includes the stories of the lives and traditions of the people who took part in this televised tragedy.

The authors have divided the book into sections according to the age and work status of their interviewees. Section 1 contains the personal accounts of seven retirees; section 2 contains eight stories of people who were "At the Height of their Careers"; section 3, entitled "Thirty Something" contains eight interviews with people in their thirties and forties; and section 4, entitled "Coming of Age," contains interviews with four subjects who had just begun to establish their lives and careers. In contrast to the method of seeking only first-hand information about specific events central to a project, Penner and Ferdinand's inclusion of the subjects' narrated life histories, their feelings, emotions, and the traditional stories in their lives, promotes a better understanding of the situation. Instead of dismissing as hearsay the belief that levees had been purposely destroyed with explosives, the authors allowed and included discussion of generational stories about levees being blown up in the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 as well as comments about similar incidents during previous hurricanes. The reoccurring mention of these events revealed a prevailing attitude that this disaster was man made, or at least man assisted, and the victims hand picked to bear the brunt of the suffering. Revealing the post-Katrina attitudes of many of the evacuees, Harold Toussaint commented on his first return to the area in October 2005: "The soldiers were an occupational force" (58). Describing the questioning they underwent in order to get to their former homes, he said "We felt criminalized" (58).

Although riddled with stories of discouragement and inhumanity, the book also includes joyful stories of rescue and "Good Samaritans." Harold Toussaint recalled his experiences marooned at a seven-story semi-retirement building as he organized people into areas of service to secure the well-being of those stranded. "There was a restaurant and a grocery store in the building, so the restaurant owner was kind enough to empty his inventory and cook with a generator to make sure that everyone ate," he explained (52). The group subsisted in their makeshift community for five days until a Chinook helicopter rescued them.

Several of the interviews offer a glimpse into the unique New Orleans culture with the discussion of the difference between Blacks and Creoles and the importance placed on the darkness of skin. While discussing her...

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