Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina

For those interested in learning more about the personal impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Narrating the Storm serves as an essential read. This important and timeless volume is a compilation of sixteen narratives that address the experiences of Gulf Coast residents, faculty, and graduate students who were caught up in the largest (not so) natural disaster in United States history. Each contributor deploys storytelling sociology as a methodological approach in order to illustrate how 'personal' experiences with disaster are not so personal, but rather reflect and are informed by larger social phenomena related to issues including race, class, gender, age, bureaucracy, risk, collective memory, the blasé, and more. The narratives in this volume exemplify how inequality and injustice are unveiled, exacerbated, and created by the occurrence of disaster; and reveal the sociological in everyday and not-so-everyday experiences. Before we are done with it, hundreds of books and thousands of articles will be written about that set of events we have come to call Katrina. But none of them will be anything like this remarkable collection of memoirs. The authors gathered here all know how to spin a tale and how to do so with a rich sociological sensibility. But, far more to the point, they all have gripping stories to tell. Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters ...Narrating the Storm is must reading for anyone interested in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath. Emotionally evocative, riveting at times, this engaging collection of original essays is replete with sociological insight. The book is an important contribution, as well, to the genre of storytelling sociology. Ronald J. Berger, author of Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry The stories told by these individuals provide compelling applications and examples of sociological concepts and theories that serve to stimulate our sociological imaginations. Narrating the Storm is an important contribution to society's efforts to better understand this latest American tragedy unleashed by Katrina. Duane A. Gill, editor of Voices of Katrina, the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy The authors...give us thoughtful, personal, often emotional narratives as well as clear analytical insight on a wide range of issues...Narrating the Storm humanizes the disaster with its honest stories and aptly uses theoretical tools to place the stories in a larger sociological context. This is a unique and engaging book. Alice Fothergill, author of Heads Above Water: Gender, Class, and Family in the Grand Forks Flood