Lisa A. Kirby, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Study Grant—Summer 2014
Exploring the Rhetoric of Disaster:
The Literature and Popular Culture of Post-Katrina New Orleans
Annotated Bibliography
Bernard-Donals, Michael. “The Rhetoric of Disaster and the Imperative of Writing.” Rhetoric
Society Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2001): 73-94. Print.
Bernard-Donals’s essay provides a compelling look at the rhetoric of disaster, based in part on
Blanchot’s book, The Writing of the Disaster. In this article, Bernard-Donals not only defines
“rhetoric of disaster” and its implications, but also considers how it might be addressed in
pedagogy. The main focus of the article is the impact disaster has on the production of
knowledge. As Bernard-Donals makes clear, “a rhetoric of disaster suggests that writing works
against knowledge at the same time it tries to inscribe it” (91). He also goes into depth to
consider the rhetorical implications of disaster discourse, such as the impact of kairos and ethos.
In all, this article became one of the most integral parts of the project and in better understanding
Blanchot’s writing.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. 1980. Trans. Ann Spurlock. Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 2005. Print.
First published in French in 1980, Blanchot’s book compels the reader to consider the nature of
disaster and how events that defy meaning or understanding impact humanity. As he states, the
Holocaust was “that utter-burn where all history took fire, where the movement of meaning was
swallowed up, where the gift, which knows nothing of forgiveness or of consent, shattered
without giving place to anything that can be affirmed, that can be denied. How can thought be
made the keeper of the holocaust where all was lost, including guardian thought?” (Blanchot 47).
He argues that disasters defy meaning and, therefore, accurately representing these disasters in
writing is ultimately impossible. Originally writing about disasters such as the Holocaust and
Hiroshima, Blanchot’s work provides a useful lens in understanding Hurricane Katrina as well.
Booth, Paul, and Amber Davisson. “Visualizing the Rhetorical Situation of Hurricane Katrina:
Photography, Popular Culture, and Meaning in Images.” American Communication
Journal 10.1 (Spring 2008). Web. 28 June 2014.
In this article, scholars Booth and Davisson examine Hurricane Katrina images through the lens
of Lloyd Bitzer’s famous article, “The Rhetorical Situation.” Using news photographs as their
examples of visual rhetoric, the authors analyze such issues as exigency and rhetorical agency.
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They consider the impact of living in a “media-saturated society” and the specific power of
visual rhetoric and images. Booth and Davisson also consider the often conflicting nature of
photography and the fact that “photography is both a situation and a rhetorical response to a
situation; is a demand for rhetoric and a demand for action.” In all, this article provides a very
useful way to consider the visual and popular culture of Hurricane Katrina and works well with
the rhetorical focus of this project.
Brown, Robbie. “New Orleans Limits Hurricane-Themed Excursions.” The New York
Times 11 October 2012. Web. 18 August 2014.
In the years following Katrina, a number of tours emerged in the city that took visitors to the
areas hardest hit by the storm, particularly the Lower Ninth Ward. This article discusses the
hurricane-themed tourist industry in New Orleans and how, in recent years, these tours have been
limited because “buses damage newly paved streets and cross the line into disaster voyeurism.”
The article also addresses the ethics of these tours and points out that residents and communities
feel they are being “gawked at” by tourists who seek to see firsthand the consequences of
Katrina. This article proved useful for an analysis of the Katrina disaster tourism industry.
Dawkins, Marcia Alesan. “A Rhetorical Response to Hurricane Katrina.” Space and
Culture 9.1 (February 2006): 12-13. Print.
Dawkins’s essay explores the depictions of Hurricane Katrina by the media and how symbols are
tools of both “social construction and reconstruction” (13). Many of the symbols surrounding
Katrina depict its victims as criminals and play upon societal fears of chaos. Dawkins suggests it
took a devastating natural disaster like Katrina to draw attention to the profound issues of
poverty and race that exist not only in New Orleans but in many parts of the United States. While
many of these images are troubling, what Dawkins discovers is interesting: “ultimately, a look at
Hurricane Katrina through the lens of rhetoric reveals that its theoretical shortcomings also
constitute rhetoric’s areas of strengths: that symbols can be used to state and to counterstate, to
create suspense and surprise, to reveal more than one or even two sides to any story, any poem,
any song.” As such, rhetoric provides a better to make meaning of these symbols and the disaster
from which they emanated. Dawkins’s article, while brief, provided interesting insights about the
rhetorical power of Katrina symbols.
Do you Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?: A Collection of Stories and Essays Set in
the Big Easy. Seattle: Chin Music P, 2006. Print.
The stories in this collection are meant to represent the musicality of New Orleans and, as such,
the collection begins with an “alternative reading order” to the table of contents that pays tribute
to all the different version of the song, “Do You Know What It Means to Be New Orleans?”
performed by everyone from Fats Domino to Harry Connick, Jr. The stories here are organized
around “The Dirge” and “The Return,” both focusing on life in New Orleans prior to Katrina and
then, of course, the work to rebuild. In many ways, this collection fits closely with Blanchot’s
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view of disaster in that it is difficult to make sense of such tragedy. However, these writers seek
to pay homage to New Orleans and its unique culture. Two of the most powerful stories in this
collection are Ray Shea’s “I Was a Teenage Float Grunt,” about Boy Scout krewes working
Mardi Gras, and Colleen Mondor’s “Listen to the Second Line,” about New Orleans music
culture. This slim volume is also interesting in that it seeks to preserve the city’s culture through
specific artifacts, such as song lyrics, drawings, and even recipes.
Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print.
Eggers’s nonfiction work, Zeitoun, tells the story of Katrina through one man, Abdulrahman
Zeitoun, and his family in the aftermath of Katrina. Zeitoun chooses not to evacuate after Katrina
and instead stays behind to help his neighbors and restore his home. He is arrested with little
explanation and held in custody for 23 days, accused of terrorist activities and refused medical
attention. Meanwhile, his evacuated family has no knowledge of her whereabouts. The book
focuses on the government mishandling of the disaster and demonstrates that Zeitoun is caught in
the crossfire of two major tragedies: “one of the worst natural disasters in American history and
the problematic tendrils of the war on terror,” as Eggers himself suggests. The intersection of
post-9/11 suspicion and Katrina devastation demonstrate a society that is in turmoil and was long
before Katrina made landfall. Eggers tackles issues of racial profiling and Bush-era policy crisis
management missteps, alongside survival in a hurricane-devastated city.
Hackler, M.B., ed. Culture after the Hurricanes: Rhetoric and Reinvention on the Gulf Coast.
Oxford: U of Mississippi P, 2010, Print.
This collection of essays focuses on some of the specific cultural icons of the Gulf Coast region,
such as food culture, neighborhood markets, and shotgun houses, to consider these artifacts in
light of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As editor M.B. Hackler suggests, “all that has been said and
done to re-create, revitalize, or reinvent the cultural life of Gulf Coast communities post-Katrina
constitutes a discourse of cultural policy” (5). Hackler and his contributors expand this idea of
“policy” beyond just governmental agencies to include any entities that are seeking to revive the
region. Moreover, Hackler and the contributors also consider the rhetorical situation of postKatrina revitalization, taking into account the various stakeholders involved and rhetorical
situation.
Hikins, James W. “Rhetoric and the Human Dimensions of Disaster: An Overlooked Lesson
from the Gulf Oil Spill.” The Huffington Post. 8 July 2010. Web. 22 July 2014.
In this interesting article, Hikins points out that disaster in the Gulf Coast region has been
impending for so long that may have become “immune” to it. Referencing the BP oil spill
specifically, but also relating his ideas to Katrina, Hikins states that a “narcotizing effect of the
BP fiasco is the prevalence of the disaster theme in movies and popular culture.” He also points
out that coverage of the oil spill has been decidedly “technocentric” and ignores the human
dimension of such disasters. Hikins’s suggestion is that we need to reframe the conversation
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about disasters, both natural and human-made, as a way to better address all the complicated
dimensions of disasters and to respond in more immediate and humane ways.
Horne, Jed. Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American
City. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.
One of the most well-known of the Katrina nonfiction books, Breach of Faith, was written by
Jed Horne, the editor of New Orleans’s daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. The original book
was published less than a year after Katrina and, as Horne points out, “the challenge was to make
sense of an overwhelming catastrophe as quickly as possible. Journalism under any
circumstances is a competitive business and the timely report has a preemptive power to shape
opinion” (xvi). Telling the stories of everyday New Orleanians who were so dramatically
affected by this disaster, as Horne’s narrative does, was a way to give voice to a city that many
feared was on the verge of collapse. Moreover, like many writers chronicling Katrina, Horne felt
a purpose larger than merely writing a book and telling a story. He intended his work to also
inspire change and renewal.
Kaufman, Sarah. “The Criminalization of New Orleanians in Katrina’s Wake.” Social Science
Research Council. 11 June 2006. Web. 19 September 2013.
Kaufman’s article examines the “criminalization” of New Orleanians by the media in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Using specific examples, most notably the famous
two-photo “looting” controversy, Kaufman considers how these media portrayals demonstrated
blatant examples of racism and classism. Interestingly, Kaufman also shifts her focus later in the
article to consider the high incarceration rates in the United States and explores how Katrina
could have presented an opportunity for social change. She states, the “aftermath of this
hurricane lays bare the fact that urban poverty has consequences that we do not face as a country,
and that this kills, slowly or quickly, thousands of people every day.” This article does excellent
work in tackling the complicated race and class issues that emerged in the media after Katrina.
Kelley-Romano, Stephanie, and Victoria Westgate. “Blaming Bush: An Analysis of Political
Cartoons Following Hurricane Katrina.” Journalism Studies 8.5 (2007): 755-73. Print.
In this article, the authors address the various uses of political cartoons: “as commentary,
critique, memorial, and criticism” (755). They also consider that political cartoons can be
considered rhetorically and present a brief overview of how rhetoricians have used political
cartoons as a way to better understand media and public perceptions of current events. KelleyRomano and Westgate then turn their attention to over 200 Katrina cartoons in general and
analyze how the “cartoons anchor responsibility on the agent of President Bush and his
administration and then expand on the offensiveness of the act” (758). They also argue that these
cartoons serve to construct a national kategoria, a rhetorical term meaning a speech of
accusation. In all, their article presents a compelling argument about the power of visual rhetoric.
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Laborde, Katheryn Krotzer. Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New
Orleans. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.
With a focus on the “found objects” of Hurricane Katrina, in the form of discarded refrigerators,
Laborde’s text provides striking black-and-white visual images and textual analysis of one of the
most powerful post-Katrina images. Laborde begins by making this powerful statement: “early in
the days of New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina, one truth became obvious: the walls
of the city had been transformed into a text that spoke of what happens when a major disaster
strikes a unique city. [ . . . ] The writing, quite literally, was on the walls” (1). After the storm,
thousands of refrigerators were abandoned in the city, many left with messages scribbled on
them. Laborde rhetorically and culturally analyzes the messages left on these refrigerators,
ranging from religious, humorous, angry, and grief-stricken. Laborde divides the refrigerator
messages into four categories: practical (empty or full); “getting the word out” (ads, warnings,
and messages); anarchy and anger (death, loss, and anger); and hope, faith, and love. No matter
the context, all provide powerful messages about a city devastated and seeking answers and
demonstrate the emergence of a post-disaster social movement.
Lee, Spike, dir. If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise. HBO, 2011. DVD.
Lee followed up When the Levees Broke with his 2010 If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t
Rise, another four-hour HBO documentary. While this film certainly continues in the same vein
as his previous project, there are also significant differences in the two. Much of If God Is
Willing revisits the people introduced in the earlier film and gives the viewer a glimpse into their
current lives. In some ways, the film begins with a sense of hope that focuses on the rebuilding
of the city. However, that sense of hope is rapidly diminished as Lee explores some of the dire
conditions that still exist in the city. While much may have changed in New Orleans in the four
years since Lee’s previous documentary, race and class are the constants that continue to hold
back the rebuilding of the city.
−. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. HBO, 2006. DVD.
In this seminal Katrina documentary, Spike Lee gets the first word about Hurricane Katrina, and
perhaps no other filmmaker since has had such perspective and commentary. The documentary,
which came out just a year after Katrina has an urgency in its attempt to highlight systemic
failures, issues of race and social class, and government mishandling that led to such devastation.
His film is didactic and purposefully so. Whether through disturbing, often graphic, images of
post-Katrina devastation, pathos-laden tales of trauma and loss in the words of Katrina victims,
or anger-filled diatribes against inept politicians, the documentary has a clear thesis. While there
are many emotions at work here, guilt, despair, and frustration, perhaps the most evident is
anger, not just on the part of those interviewed but also the filmmaker himself.
Lessin, Tia, and Carl Deal, dirs. Trouble the Water. Zeitgeist Films, 2008. DVD.
Unlike many other Katrina documentaries, which were created by professional filmmakers,
Trouble the Water was filmed on a camcorder by a citizen of New Orleans, Kimberly Roberts.
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The footage follows Roberts and her husband, Scott, in the hours before the storm, their eventual
evacuation, and then their return to their destroyed neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Lessin and Deal, the filmmakers who found Roberts and helped compile her footage, previously
worked with Michael Moore and certainly have their own thesis about government mishandling
of the disaster. The attention to the corruption and mishandling that have taken place after
Katrina serve as a central focus of the film as well, as made clear in some of the closing quotes:
“Billions of federal rebuilding dollars have not been disbursed. Rents in the city have doubled
and so has the homeless population. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is still the highest in the
world.” However, even with the focus on politics, the true power of the film comes through
Roberts’s unique voice and story.
Mann, Nicola, and Victoria Pass, eds. Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal of Visual
Culture. Special Issue: “The Cultural Visualization of Hurricane Katrina.” Spring
2011. Web.
This special issue of the journal focuses on “how our hypervisual world visualized Hurricane
Katrina, from 24-hour news networks’ live coverage to home videos made into documentaries,
from personal photos posted on blogs to the work of photojournalists on the front pages of
newspapers all over the world, and from individual memorials to state-sponsored ones” (1).
Much of the issue explores how issues of race and class were reported by the media and how the
representation of the storm had its own powerful impact on the American psyche. The online
version also contains artists’ reactions to and representations of Katrina. Two of the most useful
articles in this issue were “The Kamp Katrina Project: A Conversation with the Filmmakers,”
which provided useful information about the documentary film, and “Spectacular Disaster: The
Louisiana Superdome and Subsumed Blackness in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” which provided
interesting insight about race in New Orleans.
Macomber, Kris, Christine Mallinson, and Elizabeth Seale. “‘Katrina That Bitch!’
Hegemonic Representations of Women’s Sexuality on Hurricane Katrina
Souvenir T-Shirts.” Journal of Popular Culture 44.3 (2011): 525-44. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 17 July 2014.
In this provocative article, the authors explore the stereotypical and often misogynistic
representation of women’s sexuality through kitschy Katrina souvenir t-shirts. As part of the
analysis of the disaster tourism industry and popular culture, these t-shirts serve as interesting
reminders of the feminization of weather and how that feeds into gendered and sexualized
stereotypes. Doing a survey of the t-shirts found in New Orleans after the storm, they categorized
the messages, interviewed the public to gain their reaction to them, and even provided visual
images of the shirts. While the authors admit the shirts can be viewed as “ritual items” that serve
a communal need, they also argue the blatantly sexualized and misogynistic messages far
outweigh any possible value.
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Maresh, Michelle M. “The Aftermath of a Deadly Explosion: A Rhetorical Analysis of
Crisis Communication as Employed by British Petroleum and Phillips
Petroleum.” MA thesis Texas Tech U, 2006. Web. 28 June 2014.
This master’s thesis examines the rhetoric used after several oil spills involving BP and Phillips.
In an attempt to suggest more effective crisis managements response communication, Maresh
analyzes how these spills were handled rhetorically and the impact that had on community
response. Using specific case studies, Maresh looks at two spills particularly, the Texas City spill
in 2005 and the Phillips spill in Pasadena in 2000. While the Gulf BP oil spill of 2010 is not
addressed in this study (the thesis predates that spill), there is useful consideration of rhetorical
strategies here that can be applied to the Deepwater Horizon spill that impacted New Orleans.
Neufeld, Josh. A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge. New York: Pantheon, 2009. Print.
This graphic novel is based on the lives of seven real New Orleanians, Denise, “The Doctor,”
Abbas and Darnell, Kwame, and Leo and Michelle, in the days leading up to the storm and
then following the aftermath of Katrina. Whether chronicling the Doctor’s reluctance to leave
the city in light of the impending storm, the experiences of Denise and her family who are
weathering the hurricane at Memorial Hospital, or the flight of Kwame and his family who
flee to his brother’s dormitory in Tallahassee, Neufeld seeks to tell the stories of these people
and serve as witness to their plight. The graphic novel genre serves as an interesting way to
construct the stories of these characters and the book’s fragmented narratives style
demonstrates the very fragmentary nature of post-Katrina life.
—. “Filtering Catastrophe through Comics.” Josh Neufeld Comix & Stories, 14 January 2011.
Web. 11 July 2014.
This text was originally part of a panel presentation titled “Catastrophe Practice,” sponsored by
the French cultural institute Villa Gillet and N+1 magazine (held at the New School in 2011). It
has now been published on Neufeld’s website. In the text, Neufeld talks specifically about A.D.
and how it was a response to disaster in several contexts, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Neufeld
found the comic genre to be particularly useful for this project because the “comics form is
particularly suited for this type of work. There are some things you can convey in comics that
you simply can’t put into words. The medium’s unique combination of pictures and text, and the
fragmented narrative of the panel-by-panel format, engages the reader (and, of course, the
creator) in a particularly active role of interpretation and inference.” Ultimately, Neufeld hopes
his work will connect with readers and help them process such tragedies as Katrina and 9/11.
This text proved very useful in better understanding A.D. and the author’s process.
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Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1992. Print.
This text provides a variety of theories about the documentary form that proved very useful in
my analysis of the Katrina documentaries. Nichols begins by explaining the documentary genre
and how issues such as history, representation, identity, and ethics play a vital role in these films.
Perhaps the most useful part of the text for this project was Nichols’s attention to the role of the
filmmaker in constructing a sense of reality. He states that documentaries may best be
categorized as works that present an “argument about the historical world” (95-6), and this
“argument gives us a sense of an authorial or expository presence [ . . . and] takes two forms: it
comes both in the form of a perspective on the world and commentary about the world” (126).
This book provided a useful lens through which to view the Katrina documentaries.
Piazza, Tom. City of Refuge. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Print.
Piazza’s novel chronicles the journey of two New Orleans families, the African-American family
of SJ, Lucy, and Wesley, who live in the Lower Ninth Ward, and the Caucasian Donaldson
family, who are transplants from Minnesota. The novel follows the two families as Katrina
makes landfall and in the aftermath of the storm, as one family evacuates and the other stays in
the city. The novel explores questions of home, place, race, and social class in a way that makes
clear Piazza’s own strong agenda, while still maintaining the artistry of a novel.
−. Why New Orleans Matters. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.
In this non-fiction text, New Orleans resident Piazza explores the unique culture and spirit that
distinguishes the city. Narrating his own history with the city, as well as vignettes of those he has
encountered, Piazza writes of the very conflicted nature of the city, its beautiful culture, food,
and music, in sharp contrast to its very racist and classist history. Perhaps most important, Piazza
looks towards the future of New Orleans to consider how the city will rebuild and survive in a
post-Katrina world. In short, he seeks to tell the world why, in his view, New Orleans still
matters.
Pincus, Ed, and Lucia Small, dirs. The Axe in the Attic. Indiepix, 2007. DVD.
Race and class are the most central parts of the 2007 documentary, The Axe in the Attic. In this
documentary, the filmmakers, Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, become a central part of the narrative.
The film chronicles their 60-day road trip from New England to Louisiana to meet the evacuees
who fled Katrina and, according to Pincus, were “forced into exile in their own country.” The
directors, who dedicated the film to the “Diaspora of Hurricane Katrina,” approach their project
as a work of social justice and feel like their place in the narrative is vital. As Pincus suggests,
“Katrina is a story about broken trust between a government and its people. It’s also a story
about race and class in America. And when you are two white northerners heading south, staying
behind the camera just doesn’t seem like an option.” As such, there is less authorial distance in
this film than in other Katrina documentaries, which provides for an interesting contrast.
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Rose, Chris. 1 Dead in the Attic: After Katrina. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Print.
Chris Rose was a columnist employed by The Times-Picayune and, in fact, his book is a
collection of stories that appeared in the paper after Katrina. Rose seems to have his own agenda
with this book: to make personal sense of the Katrina tragedy. As Rose points out, “newspaper
reporters are used to covering death and disaster—it’s our bread and butter—but nothing
prepares you to do it in your own town. Usually, we parachute into trouble, fill our notebooks,
and then hightail it back to the comfort of our homes and offices” (xv). 1 Dead in the Attic thus
emerges as a chronicle of the lives of everyday New Orleanians trying to put their lives back
together after Katrina, but it is also an intensely personal story of Rose’s own struggles. Rose
takes the audience through his own journey of making sense of Katrina, in the hopes that his
discoveries will also become those of his readers. Rose is upfront that while he survived the
storm and, in some ways, his career thrived, he also struggled with depression and his marriage
fell apart. As a result, while a collection of columns, the book also becomes rather confessional
in tone.
Sabin, Ashley, and David Redmon, dirs. Kamp Katrina. Carnival Esque Films, 2009. DVD.
The plight of Hurricane Katrina victims is the central focus of Ashley Sabin and David
Redmon’s 2009 film, Kamp Katrina. Sabin and Redmon chronicle the lives of Kamp Katrina
inhabitants, victims of the storm who set up a tent camp in the backyard of two New Orleanians,
Ms. Pearl and Dave. The film follows the lives of these displaced people, demonstrating the
challenges of being homeless and the impact the storm had on them. Little time is spent on the
storm itself or the government response; in fact, it seems that Sabin and Redmon do not have
much of a political agenda. Instead, they seek to give voice to the victims of Katrina and
demonstrate the power of community and grassroots activism.
Saloy, Mona Lisa. Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems. Kirksville, MO: Truman State UP,
2014. Print.
This powerful collection of poetry details Saloy’s personal response to Katrina in the years since
the storm made landfall. Her poems display a wide range of emotions, from the fear of
evacuating the storm, to the anger that came after the failure of infrastructure and government, to
a sense of hope and renewal. The beauty of Saloy’s poetry lies in her power to narrate the unique
culture of New Orleans and Creole culture in her own unique voice. There is also a strong
political agenda in the poems in Saloy’s response to the hurricane as well as the larger American
political landscape.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in
Disaster. New York: Viking, 2009. Print.
Solnit’s powerful book focuses on the aftermath of disaster and how communities respond to
these tragic events. Solnit’s thesis is that, after a disaster, people not only respond with altruism
but, in fact, often with joy (2). They find power in community and in helping one another. Solnit
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surveys a variety of disasters, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1917 Halifax
explosion, 9/11, and, of course, Hurricane Katrina. The Katrina chapter is particularly useful in
its exploration of how old connections may have died with the storm, but many other new ones
began. As Solnit mentions, the “history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social
animals, hungry for connection, as well as for purpose and meaning,” and Hurricane Katrina is
one powerful example of that (305).
Shearer, Harry, dir. The Big Uneasy: Natural Disaster? You Don’t Know the Half of It.
FilmBuff, 2010. DVD.
Actor and director Harry Shearer is a long-time New Orleanian who responds to the disaster of
Katrina in his documentary film. Shearer begins by taking issue with the idea that Katrina was a
“natural” disaster. Instead, he points to the failure of infrastructure and government as the main
causes of the devastation, citing specifically the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers to
complete and secure the levees. To make his argument, Shearer speaks to levee investigators and
an whistleblower who sought to reveal the weaknesses in the system. Released in 2010,
Shearer’s documentary stands as one of the most recent of the Katrina films.
Wells, Ken. The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the
Wake of Hurricane Katrina. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.
With a focus on the “pirates” of St. Bernard Parish, a family of shrimp-boat captains who had
made their livelihood in Louisiana for generations, Wells provides a cultural narrative of
Louisiana through the journey of one family, the Robins. Deciding to ride out Katrina, the family
is met with a variety of struggles, and Wells chronicles their story with great pathos from landfall
until two years after the storm. Following specific family members in each chapter, the book
unfolds to not only narrate one family’s struggles but to also demonstrate the power of place and
home. Moreover, Wells, a native of Louisiana and a Cajun himself, provides his own interesting
narrative perspective to the Robins family story.