4 Books Published by University of New Orleans Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

NOLA Is
A myth. A reality.
A port. A place.
An opening. A dead end.
A womb. A grave.
Audubon Zoo and Monkey Hill uptown.
Mardi Gras Fountain with the colored lights downtown.
Above ground crypts at St. Louis Cemeteries 1, 2, and 3.
Football fields. Parade grounds. Picnic areas. Citywide.
Lake front. River front.
Fishing hole. Bayou swamp.
Raw oysters. Fried chicken.
Front-liners. Second-liners.
Storefront churches. A sacred cathedral.
Superdome. Shotgun homes.
Ya momma and ’em.
Yeah you right.
Tee-Na-Nay. Beaucoup shoo-shoo.
Preacher man. Pusher man.
Corner store. Omar, the pie man.
Red beans. Rice.
Boiled crabs. Barbeque shrimp.
Fil� gumbo. Yakamein.
Pecan pralines. Lemon pound cake.
Beignets at Caf� du Monde in the Vieux Carr�.
Trout Baquet at Lil Dizzy’s in the sixth ward.
Dooky’s duck and wild game banquets for big wigs.
Barrow’s fried catfish for the masses way up near Shrewsbury.
Shaved ice Sno-Blitzs at Hansen’s, treats for all the kids.
Late night breakfast at Trolley Stop for the hipsters.
Jazz Brunch at Commander’s Palace for the wealthy.
The purple party bus rolling round the town.
Street cars on Avenue St. Charles.
Paddle boats and mini-train rides in City Park.
Preservation hall marching in with the saints.
A SA&PC (Social, Aid, & Pleasure Club) coming out in full force.
Rebirth hollering "what bitch called the police?"
Truck parades with a neighborhood carnival Krewe.
Coconuts, coronations, and debutante balls with Zulu.
Tambourines, beadwork, colorful feathers, and shouts.
"I know you, Mardi Gras," when a friend calls you out.
Central city. New Orleans East.
Claiborne Avenue. Canal Street.
Tulane and Broad. OPP—Orleans Parish Prison.
Lower 9, CTC - ’cross the canal, yall.
Riverboats cruise up and down.
Ferry boats ride, side to side.
Crescent City Connection, the
Big Easy bridge to the west bank.
Three feet below sea level.
About two hundred miles from the gulf.
Even inundated by Katrina under a rising tide.
We cut a stroke like Shine, making it to dry land.
Regardless of how much it rains, we rise. We rise.
Who dat? We dat!

This collection is a gathering of the saints. Contemporary writers with an ear to the ground, digging on the sense and sound of what all is going down. Plus, a couple of ancestor scribes whose amazing words and clear-eyed vision remain both accurate and relevant long, long after their physical demise. Hence, here is a compendium of views and visions, which collectively map the outlines of what it means to both be and to miss New Orleans.

A mid-twentieth century African American writer and cultural activist, Tom Dent worked tirelessly to help cultivate the Black Arts Movement, mentoring numerous other artists and writers. Taken from his papers held at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, this vital collection brings together Dent’s fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and drama, including many previously unpublished works. With introductions by Kalamu ya Salaam, New Orleans Griot: A Tom Dent Reader showcases the remarkable life and writing of Tom Dent, from his early days in New York to working with the Free Southern Theatre in Mississippi to his astute observations of New Orleans and the black Mardi Gras Indians.

The future South is not what it used to be. In the year 2020, when no one can see clearly, three of the South’s children find themselves embroiled a twisted tale of music, murder, sex … and history.

The Katrina Papers is not your average memoir. It is a fusion of many kinds of writing, including intellectual autobiography, personal narrative, political/cultural analysis, spiritual journal, literary history, and poetry. Though it is the record of one man’s experience of Hurricane Katrina, it is a record that is fully a part of his life and work as a scholar, political activist, and professor. The Katrina Papers provides space not only for the traumatic events but also for ruminations on authors such as Richard Wright and theorists like Deleuze and Guattarri. The result is a complex though thoroughly accessible book. The struggle with form? the search for a medium proper to the complex social, personal, and political ramifications of an event unprecedented in this scholar’s life and in American social history? lies at the very heart of The Katrina Papers. The book depicts an enigmatic and multi-stranded world view which takes the local as its nexus for understanding the global. It resists the temptation to simplify or clarify when simplification and clarification are not possible. Ward’s narrative is, at times, very direct, but he always refuses to simplify the complex emotional and spiritual volatility of the process and the historical moment that he is witnessing. The end result is an honesty that is both pedagogical and inspiring. ?Hank Lazer