Exceptionally Black New Orleans: Public Policy, Memory, and Ritual in “The City that Care Forgot”

Abstract

Post Katrina, given the disparate outcomes and dispersal rates for African Americans, residents of the city have questioned to what extent New Orleans is being intentionally reconfigured as a smaller, wealthier, and whiter place. Despite its long-contested status, New Orleans is a black city whose history (past and present) has been white washed and revised time and again, in order to deemphasize the role that African Americans have played in its self-definition, expression, and rebellious spirit. My project is deeply invested in the mutually constitutive relationship between culture and literature, with a particular focus on the significant role that black writers and black cultural have played in the production of New Orleans culture. while the storm and its extensive destruction produced long standing social, economic, and environmental upheaval for residents of the city, with disproportionate affects for African Americans living throughout the Gulf South, it has also resulted in a creative outpouring from black writers, artists, and activists utilizing their talents to shine a light on these imbalances and working to improve lackluster conditions for black Americans here and everywhere.