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To southerners, the south is paradise, a region of wider spaces, mint juleps to cool the hot wet air, verandas that wrap around homes like loving arms.  Even in these modern times, it is the place to which natives can return, for families linger on the land for generations.  Prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the south enjoyed a steady increase in population, at least among the larger cities, where sons and daughters long gone north for opportunities rejoined their roots, and land is affordable still.  Affordable land, and better bang for a buck in modern amenities made the south the new promised land until the devastating punches of hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf south.

These two years later, the words of Thomas Paine echo: “these are the times that try people’s souls.”  Many thousands remain displaced.  Many more courageous folk are rebuilding.  They are the citizens of America, the populous of neighborhoods and churches, tearing out molding beam after boards, and remaking their lives one brick at a time. 

Few words can convert the vastness of the damage; one must see it to conceive it.  It is unimaginable.  What is trying are the delays in recovery, the endless nightmare of paperwork that baffles even the educated, and reduces the sane to question reality.  There is an indomitable spirit here, the consolation and service of volunteers, the congeniality of friends and families working together.  It is not enough. 

What makes matters worse is that the people hit the hardest are suffering the most. In the front-page story of The Times Picayune, Sunday, the 30^th of September, entitled “Left High & Dry,” one resident, Steve Donahue elevated eight feet his home soon after gutting it.  Mr. Donahue functions without his two legs lost in 1984.  He is a lesson in courage and tenacity, yet he is ineligible for elevation reimbursement.  Yet, others who have yet to elevate, may be eligible for elevation grants, which are still mired in indecision and red tape. 

Another thing, rebuilding is a logistical nightmare when reliable contractors are scarce, and stories of con artists swindling the elderly with promises of aid and assistance are too common.  On top of that, rents tripled in New Orleans, along with energy.  The average three-to-four bedroom home is costing around $600-$800 for gas and electric; yet, across the river in Algiers, or in Metairie, it is a quarter of that.  The same goes for insurance; even for auto insurance, the cost is three times higher.  For example, in Seattle, where I was employed right after the storm, hit-and-run accidents were common, as well as fender benders.  My coverage for my car, a 4-Runner, is three times higher in New Orleans than it was in Seattle with the same insurance company. Who can afford these prices?  Any student of capitalism and economics can explain that there is a perceived greater liability in New Orleans in particular, where crime is high, so they say.  The result is that corporations continue to reel in profits, and the very individuals trying to rebuild are hit hardest in their pockets.

Contrary to popular belief, violence seems to be a national past time, and abject poverty exists in every major city in America today, along with homelessness, and the high cost of health care.   The ugly head of racism is not just symbolized by the three hangman’s nooses to scare the Jena 6, but the beating of a young black girl in Los Angles charged with battery for spilling birthday cake.  Racism is still a national problem.  Billions of dollars are being allocated to the war in Iraq, yet the American Gulf Coast is stagnating in its attempts of normalcy for lack of assistance.

Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, recent New Orleans residents, put the American Government to shame by pitching in millions to help rebuild homes and therefore lives.  The Clinton/Bush fund gave funds to libraries and other areas.  It is not enough.

Southern American lives and lands are forever disrupted.  Many people are still dying from the stress of it all.  Was not America synonymous with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the American Dream, aka modern paradise?

Make no mistake.  What happened in the south can happen anywhere in the country.  The rebuilding of the South is an ethical, moral, and social imperative of the entire United States. Instead of justice and equity in rebuilding the Southern region, it’s just us.  The South is not a foreign country; perhaps if it were, more timely and substantial recovery would be accomplished.

© 2007, New Orleans

Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, Author of 2005 T.S. Eliot prize-winning book, Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems, which also won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award in Poetry 2006, Folklorist, Associate Professor of English, Dillard University, New Orleans

Mona Lisa Saloy is associate professor of English and Director of creative writing at Dillard University (before Katrina). She won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for this collection. She has also won fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals, and film. She received her PhD in English and MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University and her MA in creative writing and English from San Francisco State University. Displaced by hurricane Katrina, Saloy is a visiting associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington for the 2005/2006 academic year.  Mona Lisa Saloy Bio