Mexican Folk Art Images
2011
Natasha Trethewey by Dwight Hobbes
Author takes readers ‘Beyond Katrina’ to hurricane aftermath
Natasha Trethewey’s book tells personal stories of 2005 disaster
Dwight Hobbes
MN Spokesman-Recorder
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Natasha Trethewey visited the Twin Cities with a winning appearance at University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union Theater on April 27. She is on tour supporting her newest book, a poignant blend of prose and poetry entitled Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press).
To many hereabouts, Hurricane Katrina likely didn’t mean much beyond a tragic, distant disaster that, upon leaving the news, pretty much was forgotten.Trethewey’s address brought it to heart with compelling immediacy as she related her personal connection to the catastrophe. She left Gulfport, Mississippi with her mother at age six, staying in touch with her kid brother Joe, a strong member of their small, close-knit community.
A skilled carpenter who owned a little land, Joe rented homes to friends and neighbors who, subsisting on low incomes, appreciated his keeping leases within financial reach and putting in long hours to maintain premises, including making extensive repairs to aged, longtime resident Miss Mary’s floors.
Being poor didn’t keep citizens from caring how they lived. You understood from Trethewey’s talk that this was one of those old-style Black neighborhoods where folk got along, looked out for one another and, in general, made the best they could out of life. Then, came catastrophe.
And the aftermath. Then, Joe redoubled his efforts. There was the cost of rebuilding. For which he applied to the state for a loan and was told he didn’t qualify, even as businesses outside the community received aid. Adding unconscionable injury to injury, she notes it’s documented that the Mississippi governor funneled funds earmarked to relieve residents and to help businesses.
In desperation, Joe finally threw up his hands, resorting to illegal means of revenue — and was imprisoned. The community, of course, languishes, crippled by acts of both God and man.
Beyond Katrina, from which Trethewey read, is no dry, academic study. A moving, brilliantly crafted and down-to-earth memoir, it’s a memorable, page-turning experience. It wields the soul-stirring impact of, say, Zora Neale Hurston’s historic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Only, this is real life.
A few hours before her appearance, Trethewey spoke with the MSR from her hotel room. Asked what America’s failure to adequately relieve those who suffered Hurricane Katrina’s wrath did to her perception of our society, she stated, “It’s complex. One might be upset with a particular administration’s handling of things. For example, in Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour, along with his administration, found ways to divert money — this has been reported on in the New York Times — from the poor people on the coast into business projects that were in the making before the hurricane hit. The handling of those kinds of things are about particular administrations.
“But, to me, it seems that American people on the whole were deeply sympathetic and empathetic toward the people and the struggles they were having on the Gulf Coast. I don’t believe it is the fault of the people so much that we have begun to forget a little bit about the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” Trethewey added. “It has a lot to do with how the story has been [told in the media]. How we’ve seen much more about New Orleans because of the different nature of the tragedy there. That it was the man-made disaster of the levee break and the response after the levee breaks.
“I think that the people, Americans, when reminded, are deeply regretful for forgetting the storm and the tragedy happened there, too. There were people outside of New Orleans who suffered are still suffering.”
Among Natasha Trethewey’s credits are poetry collections Native Guard(Houghton Mifflin), which won the 2007 Pulitzer, Bellocq’s Ophelia(Graywolf), and Domestic Work (Graywolf). Her awards include a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for residency at the Bellagio Study Center the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prizes (2001, 2003, 2007) and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in poetry from Hollins University (Virginia) and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1995). She currently holds the Phyllis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.
Next on her drawing board, Natasha Trethewey is “working to try to finish another collection of poems that, if all goes well, should be out next fall [in] 2012. The book is called Thrall. “It’s got a lot to do with my interest in Mexican [Olga] Costa paintings. Paintings of colonial Mexico in the 18th century that depicted the mixed-blood, mixed-race unions that were taking place in colony. And the offspring of those unions. That’s an interest of mine.”
Not surprising, when you look at Trethewey, who, at a glance, can easily be mistaken for White. “It’s rooted in my own personal history as the biracial child of a White father and a Black mother. It was fascinating to see those images represented.”
Meanwhile, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coastis a must-read by profoundly gifted author Natasha Trethewey.
About the Author
Dwight Hobbes has written for ESSENCE, Reader’s Digest, Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul, MN Law & Politics, Pulse of the Twin Cities, Twin Cities Daily Planet, Women & Word, San Diego Union-Tribune, The Circle, to Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (where he contributes the commentary columns Hobbes In The House and Something I Said. He’s spoken his mind over National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio and KMOJ in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Was regularly featured as guest commentator on NewsNight Minnesota (KTCA-Minneapolis/St. Paul) and Spectator (Minneapolis Television Network). His monthly column “Hobbes In The House” in MN Spokesman Recorder comments on domestic abuse and rape. His plays are Shelter – produced at Mixed Blood Theatre by Pangea World Theater, Dues – produced by Mixed Blood Theatre, University of Southern Illinois in Point of Revue, selected for Bedlam Theatre’s 10-Minute Play Festival and published by Playscripts, Inc. You Can’t Always Sometimes Never Tell – produced by Theater Center Philadelphia, Long Island University, reading at The Kennedy Center and published in the anthology CENTER STAGE, In the Midst – produced by Long Island University, starring Samuel E. Wright. Hobbes spoke on the panel “Farewell To August Wilson” at the Guthrie Theater, broadcast on Conversations With Al McFarlane (KFAI, KMOJ). Twin Cities Daily Planet articles archived at www.tcdailyplanet.net/dwighthobbes.
Coming: “Angels Don’t Really Fly” EP by Dwight Hobbes & The All-Star Hired Guns featuring Alicia Wiley. The crew: Me, Alicia Wiley, Stanley Kipper, Chico Perez, Jeff “Boday” Christensen, Aaron “Orange A.C.” Cosgrove and Yohannes Tona. Singer-songwriter Dwight Hobbes recorded the single “Atlanta Children” (BeatBad Records) and gigged 10 years in the Long Island/NYC area, including The Other End, Kenny’s Castaways and My Fathers Place. Fronted the Boston blues band Midlight. In Minneapolis, Hobbes opened for David Daniels at First Street Entry, James Curry at Terminal Bar, sat in with Yohannes Tona, Alicia Wiley at Sol Testimony’s Soul Jam, The New Congress at Babalu, Willie Murphy at the Viking Bar and Wain McFarlane & Jahz at Lucille’s Kitchen. Dwight Hobbes still drops in at the occasional open mic around town.
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