Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath

As ashamed as I am to say it, this oral history, Voices from the Storm, is something I'd usually never pick up at a bookstore, and the only reason I got it was because it was on sale for $5.00 at Timothy McSweeney's garage sale. Once I received my copy, however, the stories absorbed me within the first ten pages. The meticulously edited interviews with fourteen survivors of Hurricane Katrina--young, old, single, mothers of nine, black, Arab-American, American Indian, white--were compelling not just for the stories they were telling but also the way in which those interviewed spoke. Many of the interviewees' very poor education hadn't even equipped them with the vocabulary to describe the atrocities they witnessed. The surprising variety of their stories amazed me also: one man, after weeks of rescuing neighbors and strangers, was arrested and held in jail without bond or a phone call under suspicions (unfounded and racist) of terrorism. (For more on this man Abdulrahman Zeitoun, explore Dave Eggers' recent work of nonfiction, Zeitoun.) Many families were stuck in New Orleans' infamous housing projects; one man was wrongfully imprisoned for a traffic violation the night before the storm hit and was trapped inside his cell when guards abandoned the prisoners. Each story is affecting in its own way, and definitely allowed me to better understand the magnitude of the suffering Katrina--and, to a large extent, the U.S. government--inflicted upon hte residents of New Orleans.