Synopsis
Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported—and misreported—by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie’s observation that, “Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is.” This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie’s formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie’s rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.
About the Author
Christopher Lloyd graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1991 with two scholarships and a double first-class degree in History. He then became a graduate trainee journalist on The Sunday Times newspaper and was trained at the City University where he gained a diploma in newspaper journalism. In 1993, Lloyd was appointed The Sunday Times Innovation Editor and won the 1994 Texaco award for Science Journalist of the Year. In 1997 Lloyd co-founded LineOne, a joint venture Internet Service business owned by BT and News International and later became a director of News Internationals' Internet activities. He qualified in direct marketing with a Cert DM from the Institute of Direct Marketing. In January 2001 Lloyd was recruited to become chief executive of Immersive Education, an education software publishing company based in Oxford. In 2006 he left Immersive Education to spend time travelling across Europe with his wife and two children, both of whom were home-educated. The time spent on the road travelling around Europe inspired him to come up with the concept for What on Earth Happened?
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