Reflection Blog: Hurricane Katrina

Reflection blogs (reflect about one of these questions/statments)
“The storm came and washed the trash out of New Orleans”
What does it mean to be a refugee? Why was this such a problematic term?
"New Orleans has 1/6th of its previous population"
What kinds of roles has music played in shaping New Orleans?
What is lost if people don’t return to New Orleans?
What does a quality education do for a city like New Orleans?
What would you want to say to FEMA, to President Bush, to Congress, to any government agency about what happened in New Orleans?

I am choosing to respond to the last question that states "what would you want to say to FEMA, to President Bush, to Congress, to any government agency about what happened in New Orleans?"

I believe FEMA and President George Bush mishandled the situation to the extreme. I remember in the video "When the Levees Broke," the director of FEMA stated that FEMA was prepared to react and would react successfully to the Hurricane Katrina situation. Looking back, one can tell that the response was much less than adequate. People were treated like animals, and as a whole the effort by the federal government seemed half-baked. I noticed several mistakes that I was not aware of in the past: giving residents one way tickets out of the city which doesnt enable them to get back to their home, booting residents out of hotels, not providing enough food and shelter in the residents time of need, and having an attitude of carelessness. I would tell FEMA that they made a huge mistake, and they must learn from it so they are able to respond to future disasters much more efficently and effectively.

George Bush's attitude was especaially uncalled for. The fact that he was on vacation for two weeks while people in New Orleans were suffering appauled me. He should have taken action in the days before Katrina even hit. Also, George Bush wanted to fool the American public by making it seem like the city was comming back together. An example of this was turning on the power to buildings while there was a press conference, then cutting the power after. This is deception and should not be tollerated. I would tell Bush that he should resign as president of the United States.

7/11 reading summary

The article "The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis" by Hillary Chute is an analysis of a graphic narrative that follows the life of an Iranian girl during the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Chute talks about how different pictures in the graphic novel represent different emotions of the author. For example, "[the use of] spacing within the pictorial frame [symbolizes] the disruption of her own characterological presence." Also, the narrative jumps from one time to another frequently to emphasize the drama involved with the story. In addition, the graphic narrative uses only black and white instead of color. This is because there is a vast amount of war and violence included in the narrative. Because war is becoming a "normal" part of life, the author believed that drawing in color would add to the normality of the situation. Black and white brings out a feeling of unusualness.

In reaction, I found Chute's article very interesting. The part of the article I found most intriguing was the fact that the author of the graphic narrative purposely used black and white as opposed to color to make war and violence jump out at the reader. Also interesting to me was the fact that the graphic novel contained an abundance of dead bodies and other obscene inclusions. This makes the story more realistic.

If I had to ask three questions, I would ask (1) why was the author inspired to do a graphic novel as opposed to a written memoir, (2) does the author think that a graphic novel is more powerful then a written memoir, and (3) does the author have any intentions of writing a written memoir to accompany this graphic novel.

Katrina blog response

Watching the documentary “When the Levees Broke” was touching and made me think hard about how the narrative I saw could help me write a better memoir. I believe the major element that contributed to the power of “When the Levees Broke” was the emotion that was evident in the video. Seeing these people express their sadness and anger made me more able to relate to their story. Also, if the video contained no emotion it would be much harder for the viewers to show empathy to the individuals involved in the narrative.

One of the suggestions I received from my peers was to make my memoir more emotional and I can see from watching the video that they’re very right. By expressing emotions the reader is able to be in the storyteller’s shoes and actually see through their eyes. Using these suggestions from peers and strategies gained from the video, I have revised my memoir draft in such a way that allows the reader to feel what I felt. I believe that now my memoir is much more powerful and reader friendly.

7/2 Readings

Mathis, Frank. The History Teacher - Writing a Memoir: The Involvement of Art with Craft. 19 vols. Society For The History Of Education, 1986.

Slusarczyk, Alison, and Amanda Moses. Our Own Words, 2007-2008 Edition. Talahassee: Florida State University, 2008.

"Naratives from SAC." Project Muse Scholarly Journals Online. Students at the Center. 3 July 2008.


In the article Writing a Memoir: the Involvement of Art with Craft, author Frank Mathis gives readers a brief history of his life and involvement with World War II, gives a few pointers for those interested in writing a memoir, and surmises the benefits involved with memoir writing. However the most noteworthy concept presented is Mathis’ stance that writing memoirs involves the linkage between a “novelist’s art and historian’s craft.” Historians are typically trained to look back on history and critique it, yet when attempting to write a memoir they are faced with an intriguing challenge in how to criticize themselves. Mathis also says that writing memoirs benefits the author. In Mathis’ case, many WWII veterans who read his memoir sent him letters regarding the text.

Florida State University publishes Our Own Words which is a collection of narratives written by their college students. These stories are very interesting, and shed much light on how to write a proper, reader friendly memoir. In the first narrative Sing with Me Somehow by Alison Slusarczyk, Slusarczyk tells the story of a trying period in her teenage years and how singing with the family and playing the piano made situations more bearable. In the second narrative Far From Wonderland by Amanda Moses, the author makes ties between today’s deteriorating society and the old fairy tale Alice in Wonderland.

Similar to Our Own Words, Narratives from SAC is a compilation of stories written by college students at Clemson University. These memoirs are about the involvement of the authors with Hurricane Katrina. The narratives cover many different aspects of the disaster such as education in New Orleans after the disaster, family suffering, and personal stories of terror and trauma.

In reaction to Frank Mathis’ article, I believe that the connection between a historian and artist is of utmost importance when writing a memoir. I found the article extremely interesting and thought the text brought to the table many very important points that need to be taken into consideration when starting the writing process. The college students at FSU are clearly talented in their approach to narrative writing. The most intriguing aspect of the articles I read from their postings was the use of profanity in dialogue. This point was also mentioned in Mathis’ article. The use of profanity makes the conversation very realistic and allows the reader to more easily envision the scene taking place. As well, the narratives from the students at Clemson were equally interesting. It is always enlightening to read of others experiences and try to relate to them. The different articles brought various pieces of the puzzle that was Katrina together to make the situation easier for outsiders, or those not familiar with the disaster, to understand.

If I had to pose three questions to the authors, I would ask Frank Mathis how long it took to realize that you must be an artist and historian at the same time when writing memoirs. I would also ask him if he’d ever read a memoir written by someone who had not made that connection, and if it was as good a narrative. I would ask Alison Slusarczyk if she thought that dialogue should be used sparingly in a memoir or if it should take center stage, as it seemed to in her narrative.