Beyond Katrina: A memoir.
We have just finished Beyond Katrina by Natasha Trethewey. This autobiography has stood out to me, essentially because it’s not a story about her, but more of a story about her home and her family. It also includes a series of poems she has written about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. Trethewey’s main reason for writing this story I feel is to shed light on the entire Mississippi gulf coast, and not just New Orleans who everyone thinks of when they hear the words Hurricane Katrina.
Trethewey brings us in personally, I feel like I can connect more easily to her than any other authors that we have read. She has no problem talking about low points in her life like her brother being arrested. She is a lot more intimate in comparison to Wolff in the act of sharing all the details of a certain event. The poems also serve as a powerful tool to instill emotions in the reader.
One powerful quote that jumped out as me was, “A cleansing the waiter said. Erasure wrought by wind and water.” (Trethewey 28) Another powerful idea was the the slate was wiped clean, with the gulf coast being the slate and Katrina was the eraser. Tretheway was able to turn this into a powerful allegory, referring to her revisions to her book as the hurricane coming in and switching things around to essentially turn it into a masterpiece, but her book holds a darker side quoting residents who are pretty certain that the Gulf will never fully recover from the devastation, and if it does it won’t be a pretty process. This is shown in the words of Derrick Evans a gulf historian, “I don’t want to be able to say that I can see the future,” he told me, “but the devastation of the storm will not surpass the devastation brought on by the recovery.” (Trethewey 28) Personally, I think he means that the storm has caused grief for many, and that will continue into the rebuilding where people are already emotionally weak and may not be able to handle starting over again. Also all those that evacuated and have not yet returned will be in for a rude awakening.
This book was a powerful reminder of the tragedy that occurred and was clearly able to shed a light on the entire gulf coast and not just New Orleans. The use of poems was powerful in instilling emotion and the reader was really able to get close to Trethewey because she allowed us to find out more and not be left out in the cold. The fact that this autobiography was not entirely about her, may have allowed her to do that.
