Embedded Files
“The lake was coming. They had to reach the six-mile bridge. It was high and safe perhaps.
“The lake was coming. They had to reach the six-mile bridge. It was high and safe perhaps.
“Everybody was walking the fill. Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly. Wind and rain beating on old folks and beating on babies. Tea Cake stumbled once or twice in his weariness and Janie held him up. So they reached the bridge at Six Mile Bend and thought to rest.
“Everybody was walking the fill. Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly. Wind and rain beating on old folks and beating on babies. Tea Cake stumbled once or twice in his weariness and Janie held him up. So they reached the bridge at Six Mile Bend and thought to rest.
“But it was crowded. White people had preempted that point of elevation and there was no more room. They could climb up one of its high sides and down the other, that was all. Miles further on, still no rest.” (p.164)
“But it was crowded. White people had preempted that point of elevation and there was no more room. They could climb up one of its high sides and down the other, that was all. Miles further on, still no rest.” (p.164)
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall just outside New Orleans, and the parallels to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane that Zora Neale Hurston describes are telling. Both New Orleans and the muck near the Everglades sit below sea level, next to huge lakes that are tenuously held back by levees, and have majority Black and Brown populations. When the levees broke in New Orleans, the effect was devastating, and the official response was slow and inadequate. Many consider it yet another instance of environmental racism in America’s (and the world’s) history. Kanye West famously went off-script during a live TV fundraiser to passionately, if inelegantly, express the sentiment. But don’t merely take Ye’s word for it; the suffering of the people of New Orleans was well documented. There are many gut-wrenching photos (content warning: death, natural disaster) collected by journalists into this collection that capture just a handful of moments from that horrible time.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall just outside New Orleans, and the parallels to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane that Zora Neale Hurston describes are telling. Both New Orleans and the muck near the Everglades sit below sea level, next to huge lakes that are tenuously held back by levees, and have majority Black and Brown populations. When the levees broke in New Orleans, the effect was devastating, and the official response was slow and inadequate. Many consider it yet another instance of environmental racism in America’s (and the world’s) history. Kanye West famously went off-script during a live TV fundraiser to passionately, if inelegantly, express the sentiment. But don’t merely take Ye’s word for it; the suffering of the people of New Orleans was well documented. There are many gut-wrenching photos (content warning: death, natural disaster) collected by journalists into this collection that capture just a handful of moments from that horrible time.
If looking at those photos isn’t problematic for you, pick just one of them and devise a way to connect it to an episode in Their Eyes Were Watching God, either from chapters 18 and 19 or from anywhere in the novel.
If looking at those photos isn’t problematic for you, pick just one of them and devise a way to connect it to an episode in Their Eyes Were Watching God, either from chapters 18 and 19 or from anywhere in the novel.
Alternatively, if looking at those photos is problematic for you, have a listen to what Terence Blanchard has to say about the pride and the resilience of the people of New Orleans. Terence is native New Orleanian and musician who wrote the score for Spike Lee’s epic documentary about Katrina and whose family lost their home in the disaster. Devise a way to connect the sentiments he expresses here to some character or episode from the novel.
Alternatively, if looking at those photos is problematic for you, have a listen to what Terence Blanchard has to say about the pride and the resilience of the people of New Orleans. Terence is native New Orleanian and musician who wrote the score for Spike Lee’s epic documentary about Katrina and whose family lost their home in the disaster. Devise a way to connect the sentiments he expresses here to some character or episode from the novel.
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