“We Shall Not Be Moved”, written and published in 2012 by Tom Wooten, presents the story of post-disaster recovery after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Wooten’s book actually contains a collection of stories about post-Katrina recovery in five different New Orleans neighborhoods.
“We Shall Not Be Moved” is an excellent read for those interested in learning more about the city of New Orleans both before and after Katrina. I also recommend the book to anyone interested in the anatomy of recovery in any community after a disaster.
I have read several books and articles on Katrina. However, I hadn’t read much about the long-term recovery process in New Orleans before reading Mr. Wooten’s book. More importantly, this book educates the reader that community recovery after a disaster is about the residents of the community and where they live – that is, the neighborhoods.
The book is written in a narrative style in which Mr. Wooten identifies himself as the narrator. He is telling the stories of key neighborhood / community leaders in each of the five neighborhoods in question.
It can be a bit challenging for the reader to keep up with the progression of events and circumstances in each given neighborhood as Mr. Wooten’s text shifts back and forth from each of them. That is not a criticism of your writing style. It is an observation to highlight the fact that the narrator of these five stories is telling all five at the same time or in parallel with each other.
I first learned about this book in a 2012 “Wall Street Journal” newspaper article. The article made me ask this question: Why did the author of the book write and produce this book so many years (seven) after Katrina?
Mr. Wooten placed me as the reader on half of the heartbreaking experiences of individual New Orleans residents and neighborhood leaders who served as the central characters in the true stories he was telling. So the answer to the above question was that this book could not have been written until several years after the Katrina disaster. This recovery takes years to occur and is still ongoing. Mr. Wooten does a great job of explaining the how and why.
This book was made possible by the incredible perseverance of some key New Orleans residents and their neighbors. As the author of the book tells us; came on the scene in 2007 about a year and a half after Katrina as a volunteer in New Orleans. It became part of the evolution of the recovery story as I worked with these individual residents.
The perseverance of individual New Orleans residents has produced New Orleans’ recovery process. “We will not move” educates the reader on how this was a recovery from scratch that has progressed despite counterproductive processes led by the government. Each of the five given neighborhoods effectively became individual cities within the general city of New Orleans. They had to write their own redevelopment plans, start their own schools, and implement community-based social service networks to provide basic necessities like food, clothing, and emergency shelter.
Readers of the book “We Will Not Move” will be frustrated reading about the successful efforts of New Orleans residents or community-based nonprofits to rebuild houses, start new schools, and then be hampered by lack of public services. basic as electricity and water. This book shows that the recovery could have proceeded faster if governments at all three levels (federal, state, local) had been better prepared with a post-disaster plan that focused on immediately restoring basic public services such as clean drinking water and wastewater treatment. and electricity for all residential areas of the city.
One of the most interesting parts of the five stories of Mr. Wooten is the challenge of the neighbors who need to convince the neighbors to return to their home in New Orleans. The related learning point for me was that the government couldn’t do this for residents. They had to do sales work for each other. Mr. Wooten’s book of stories shows the reader how individual residents felt somewhat intimidated to “be the first” or “only” returnees in their given block.
Memorable quotes from “We won’t move” include the following:
- From Lakeview neighborhood resident Nancy Lytle: “It’s a shame on America if we don’t learn from him (Katrina) and put systems in other cities after seeing what happened here.”
- From Lower Ninth Ward resident and neighborhood leader Tricia Jones: “They (fellow residents) would enter their homes without water. Without lights.” And, “I wish I could just rebuild everyone en masse, but I can’t.”
- From Lakeview resident and neighborhood leader Martin Landrieu: “The government should focus early on quickly restoring public schools and infrastructure while funding local social service providers …”
- From Lower Ninth Ward resident Georgia Johnson who had moved into her home on Jourdan Avenue long before it was completely repaired: “It’s my choice … I feel so good when I’m home.”
I share the feeling that neo-English Tom Wooten presents at the beginning of his book on how New Orleans can be captivating to someone who is not a native of New Orleans. This is because I have attended several of New Orleans’ annual jazz and heritage festivals from 2000 to the present.
So it’s interesting to note that Tom Wooten, author of “We Shall Not Be Moved,” went from serving as a volunteer related to post-Katrina recovery to working as a fifth and sixth grade writing teacher in New Orleans for two years. prior to his current work on a Ph.D. at Harvard University. I hope that Mr. Wooten will consider writing a future book to inform us of “what happened next” for each of the five neighborhood stories featured in this book.
