I Hear: In her novel, Beyond Katrina, Trethewey tries to document the events that took place before and after hurricane Katrina. Within her documentation of the events, her family and others are mentioned, all there to help portray what life used to be and life as they knew it now. Reading through these events, the word “cleansing” continued to pop into my mind, remembering the waiter at the restaurant, ever time Trethewey mentioned the empty lots, the eviction signs, and even her own brother’s incarceration.
I Notice: Although it is a very short segment in the novel and is not mentioned again, the episode with the waiter is heavily weighted through Beyond Katrina. The scene begins with the young waiter expressing his opinion about the hurricane, saying,
“What’s different now is that the new generation respects the hurricanes, unlike the folks before. It needed to happen, to teach us something, a cleaning, that’s what it was” (page 27).
Trethewey replays to his way of thinking by writing,
“ I feel uncomfortable thinking about what he might have meant, particularly after hearing some people opine about New Orleans and who are turned out: the poorer, working class-overwhelmingly African American- all lumped together with supposed criminals that the city would rather not see return” (page 27).
As I continued to read, I found out that her brother owned many houses and it was looking like he would be successful in this business, just like his uncle. After Katrina we see a lot of focus on the houses that used to be there and how many people could not afford to rebuild or even to demolish their own house. It was almost like it was made impossible to for anyone to rebuild from the tragedy that wasn’t part of the higher class of society. Including, Joe, Trethewey’s bother. So instead of the reconstruction that was supposed to be happening, houses were being torn down and boards were getting put up on the windows.
Another moment that sticks out is when Joe is sent to jail for trafficking cocaine. To me Joe was focused to resort to that type of life style due to the lake of opportunity that was available to him at the time. For instance, in this portion of his life he thought he was going to begin to start his life, by renting his houses and starting a successful career. Instead, Katrina resulting in him losing everything he ever had and no job or money to rebuild. An easy 4,000 dollars seemed like the only way out at the time.
Going back to the original quote from the waiter one begins to think more about what is said on this half a page of text. Although it is a very brief part of the novel I feel that the way Trethewey responds plays a huge part in the way the novel was structured and put together. She never quite says this, but to me it seems like her brother and other stories were told to help people see how everyone was forgotten and no one was cared about. The city wanted to get rid of what they saw was a bearded, not allowing them to move into their houses or making it impossible to rebuild. While in jail Joe found more people in jail that were there do to Katrina. It is almost like they were trying to make these people leave or locking them up so that they were not able to come back. It was all part of the cleansing process.
Craft wise, I feel that this was very cleaver. Trethewey was able to show people how badly the people of the Gulf were treated without even saying it. For example, she never outright says that the actions that were taken against these people were only put there to harm the locate people. Instead she used what the waiter said to get her point across and by just stating the facts.
I Wonder: I would still like to focus on the idea of cleansing some more. Do you think Joe’s time at prison and his reflection on himself was a back fire to the cleansing process? Did the author intentionally not mention the cleansing processes again?
nice post. i also wonder about the author’s own sense of cleansing–the ways her efforts to sort through these various narratives is an effort to clear things, or if not, what the opposite of clearing things up would be for a work like this.