In the introduction to Guernica Magazine’s New Orleans-themed September edition, editor Pia Ehrhardt writes:
“When friends from out of town come to visit, my husband, Malcolm, and I put them in the car and drive. Driving is the only way to grasp what happened, what is happening, and what is not happening in New Orleans today. We drive for hours and see nothing but flood-damaged neighborhoods: from the 17th Street Canal to Lakeview and down to St. Bernard, from Treme to Gentilly and over to Slidell. Some houses are being rebuilt, but right next-door unoccupied homes are in limbo for a jack-o-lantern effect.”
“Our visitors have questions, concerns, until the number of affected blocks sinks in and they go quiet… Some cry. All of them are humbled, stunned, and saddened.”
You know, I’ve been known to get a little flippant here on Sundays writing in this weird “blogger voice” that comes out of some dark corner of my apparently very unbalanced brain. But not here.
This time, all I can really do is spend a moment to offer my unabashed praise for this collection. Looking at the photos and reading the work she included this September, I couldn’t help but feel like she was driving me around, like all these artists were driving me around, like I finally understood, at least a tiny, tiny bit, something about what happened in New Orleans in August of 2005.
Whether it’s 18-year old Monique Thomas asking, “What can you do with an invisible fire?”, the wonderfully surreal short story involving an albino dog, or the poem “Green Zone New Orleans,” I can’t suggest strongly enough that you spend a few hours reading through every single one of these exceptional pieces.
