Ulteriori informazioni
A microcosm of the American ''melting pot,'' New Orleans is home to French, Spanish, Creole, African, and many other cultural influences. No heaven on earth, it is riddled with poverty, racism and injustice. But it is also a city like no other; the birthplace of jazz, source of spectacular cuisine, and one of the country''s largest ports. In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, there was some question as to whether or not the devastated city of New Orleans should be rebuilt. Award-winning novelist and cultural critic Tom Piazza is a longtime resident of the Crescent City, and Why New Orleans Matters is his impassioned defense of this unique town. On its publication, Why New Orleans Matters became an instant classic. Now featuring an extensive afterword that updates the reader on progress made since Katrina, this book is a gift from one of our most talented writers to the city he calls home - and to the nation on which that city''s survival depends. Tom Piazza is an award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His books include the Faulkner Society Award-winning novel My Cold War, and Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories, a widely acclaimed story collection that won the James Michener Award for Fiction. He also won a Grammy Award for Album Notes for Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey. Piazza''s writing on music has also appeared frequently in the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and Oxford American, where he was the Southern Music columnist for several years. ''Hot and real and from the heart ... An emotionally wrenching experience - at times hilarious, at times heartbreaking.'' - New Orleans Times-Picayune
Info autore
Tom Piazza is the author of the novels City of Refuge and My Cold War, the post-Katrina manifesto Why New Orleans Matters, the essay collection Devil Sent the Rain, and many other works. He was a principal writer for the HBO drama series Treme and the winner of a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues: A Musical Journey. He lives in New Orleans.
Riassunto
More than a decade after Hurricane Katrina, revisit Tom Piazza’s award-winning appraisal of a city in crisis—with a new afterword placing the story of New Orleans in the context of the ongoing threat to America’s coastal populations.
In the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, Americans have learned much from the resilience of this proud, battered city. And yet, even as the city has regained some of its lost footing, other regions around the country continue to be battered by hurricanes, snow and ice storms, and massive weather events like Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the mid-Atlantic coast seven years later.
Published just months after the storm, Why New Orleans Matters was immediately hailed as a passionate and eloquent celebration of the city as both a cultural center and a home to millions of residents from varied—and sometimes precarious—walks of life. Award-winning author Tom Piazza, a longtime New Orleans resident, evoked the sensuous rapture of the city that gave us jazz music and Creole cooking, but also examined its deep undercurrents of corruption, racism, and injustice, and explored how its people endure and transcend those conditions. Perhaps most important, he asked that we all, as Americans consider our shared responsibility to this great and neglected metropolis and all the things it has shared with the world: its grace and beauty, resilience and soul.
In the years since its first publication, Piazza has continued to explore the story of New Orleans and its people in many ways—most notably in his novel City of Refuge and as a writer for the acclaimed HBO series Treme, created by David Simon. Now, he revisits Why New Orleans Matters—and, in an all-new foreword for this edition, re-examines the story of Katrina as a cautionary tale for a nation that has too often neglected both its treasures and, far more important, its people.
Why does this one city’s survival matter to all of us?
- An Insider’s Perspective: Written by Tom Piazza, a longtime resident and writer for HBO’s Treme, who captures the city’s sensuous rapture and its deepest flaws.
- Music, Food, and Culture: A passionate celebration of the singular spirit that gave the world jazz music, Creole cooking, second-line parades, and the irreplaceable soul of the Crescent City.
- A System’s Failure: A clear-eyed examination of the corruption, racism, and injustice that existed long before the storm—and a look at how those failures were exposed by the floodwaters.
- Hurricane Katrina’s Legacy: Goes beyond the initial disaster to explore the lessons of resilience and recovery, asking what we owe to this great American metropolis and others like it.
