Wednesday, November 16, 2011
New Orleans Journal
When trying to find a profile of New Orleans to compare to Why New Orleans Matters I found the New Orleans Journal in the New Yorker. Written by Dan Baum, these journal entries are in the format of a daily journal. Each entry is just a recap of the events of his day. It is more of a personal narrative than Piazza's version of New Orleans. This day to day account makes the story of New Orleans more personal and feels less forced than Piazza's book. It feels more objective and makes the reader relate to New Orleans more. Piazza could have taken an approach closer to Baum's.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Why New Orlean Matters Recap
Overall, Piazza did a good job of describing the spirit of New Orleans. He showed what makes New Orleans so special and what would be lost if the rebuilding of the city was mishandled. The overall structure of the book works. He talks about what he loves about the city and then describes the destruction and the aftermath. The fact that a place that is so unique and special to him might not be the same again is devastating to him and he makes the reader sympathize with him. The book has a ton of great imagery. Piazza does a great job of showing the reader what New Orleans looks like at its most New-Orleans-like moments. I actually learned a lot about what goes on in New Orleans.
I still have a problem of the way he portrays everyone in New Orleans as smiling, drinking, dancing, good-time-having people at all times. He builds up this image of this constant party where everyone hangs out together no matter their social class or race or situation, and then mentions that there is racism and that the rich gave no effort to trying to empathize with the most destroyed parts of the city. Everyone hangs out together, but the rich are too comfortable to understand. The city is too well-knit to judge one another, but there is still racism. I don't think he's being inaccurate or intentionally trying to paint an overly bright picture, but I do think he's guilty of being too enamored with New Orleans. It feels like a book written by a guy who wasn't born in New Orleans and then traveled there and fell in love with how different it was culturally. And that is who he is. He loves New Orleans like my high school German teacher loved Berlin. She would tell us about how amazing and diverse and creative and expressive and perfect Berlin was. She lived there for 10 years and moved back here for a few years, but was going back again. To her, it was a magical city and it was her home at heart. It had flaws, but they just made it that much better. That's what Piazza does in this book.
I still have a problem of the way he portrays everyone in New Orleans as smiling, drinking, dancing, good-time-having people at all times. He builds up this image of this constant party where everyone hangs out together no matter their social class or race or situation, and then mentions that there is racism and that the rich gave no effort to trying to empathize with the most destroyed parts of the city. Everyone hangs out together, but the rich are too comfortable to understand. The city is too well-knit to judge one another, but there is still racism. I don't think he's being inaccurate or intentionally trying to paint an overly bright picture, but I do think he's guilty of being too enamored with New Orleans. It feels like a book written by a guy who wasn't born in New Orleans and then traveled there and fell in love with how different it was culturally. And that is who he is. He loves New Orleans like my high school German teacher loved Berlin. She would tell us about how amazing and diverse and creative and expressive and perfect Berlin was. She lived there for 10 years and moved back here for a few years, but was going back again. To her, it was a magical city and it was her home at heart. It had flaws, but they just made it that much better. That's what Piazza does in this book.
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