Where We Know: New Orleans as Home

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Where We Know: New Orleans as Home
October 2010
Seattlepi

Books from Chin Music Press are "a triumphant kick in the pants for anyone who doubts the future of paper-and-ink books," according to NPR. Their Broken Levee imprint has a new anthology, Where We Know: New Orleans as Home, coming out this November.



Like its predecessor Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans, it's a book for the internet age. A collection of essays, maps, stories, and pictures, it's "hyperlinked" with a timeline of when the pieces occur and a guide to the different New Orleans neighborhoods in which they're placed. This is because as one learns about New Orleans, one finds that neighborhoods matter. It is all New Orleans, of course, that crazy musical town with the crazy food and the crazy people, but there's the Quarter, with its architecture and stories from notables visiting there and then there's Touro, where the life history of one building shows urban decline and then gentrification.


In a similar way, the "when" matters. There's before Katrina, and there's after. That is undeniable. But works from Lafcadio Hearn and pre-1900 excerpts from the "New Orleans Bee" elegantly suggest the idea that New Orleans is the same as it ever was--it has always been a thriving city in a condition of perpetual decay. According to the editor, Professor David Rutledge, "This book is about the choice of making--or not making--New Orleans home." It is not about the storm, but it is. How can one make that choice without considering the storm?



One success of the book is the ability to convey sound through the written word. The internet cheats with its sound files and speakers. Sam Jasper's piece on the "low altitude triangle" of the Marigny is a concerto of trains, container ships, mules (yes, mules), Mr. Okra the vegetable vendor, and more that makes the reader luxuriate in what she hears but also wonder if it doesn't drive her crazy sometimes. "Treme" writer Lolis Eric Elie is in constant dialogue with voices as he writes his essay in a way "neat and linear, like I learned in school and on television." But the voices will not allow him to do that. New Orleans will not be captured that way.

So perhaps do not read Where We Know in a way neat and linear. It does not lend itself to that. Surf it like you would the web. Discover with Mark Folse's daughter what Katrina smelled like by putting your nose up to the locked doors of the St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church, designed by his father, but like so much of the city, future uncertain. Look at the pictures of the tattoos, the remembrances of the storm and the city engraved upon the flesh of its people. Taste the best fried chicken on the planet with Ray Shea and his friend The Professor when they discover Dooky Chase's open. Discover a quote from messianic quarterback Drew Brees. Go back and revisit. What is it like to play tuba in a brass band? Determine for yourself what "Treme" writer Tom Piazza did, Why New Orleans Matters.

Where We Know is not the immediate cri de coeur of Howlin' in the Wires. It is a suggestion of home in the deepest sense of not only where one lives, but also of identity, of history, of aggravation steeped in the hope for better things to come. For the New Orleanian, or for the more than casual visitor, this home is something to engage with, to grapple with, to dance with. Start with Where We Know.

Ask an informed American citizen today to ruminate on Dallas or Atlanta or Phoenix, and you will probably get small talk, lukewarm pleasantries, and a brief conversation. Ask them what they think about New Orleans, and you are in not only for an opinionated retort, but a sentimental smile, a scolding finger, a treasured memory, a shaking head, or an exasperated shrug over the course of a conversation spanning the spectrum of human experience. This enigmatic charm, to liberated and fascinate, helps explain why thousands of people have rejected the amenities and opportunities of the lukewarm Dallases and Atlantas and Phoenixes of the world, and chosen instead to cast their lot with this troubled old port--embracing all its splendors and dilemmas, all its booms and busts, all its joys and tragedies.

Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I spew thee from my mouth. Revelation 3:16
From Richard Campanella , Bienville's Dilemma (2008), in Where We Know