Different Places, Same Things

Tim Gautreaux’s Floyd’s Girl was an introduction to the Cajun South, a part of Louisiana I was not that eager to investigate besides eating delicious crawfish and dancing. I wasn’t too excited for numerous reasons, often hearing about the negative sides of Cajun culture. That they have strong ties, and strong pride in their Cajun roots, and how they have gone about maintaining this pride generation after generation. Rumor has it that they aren’t very friendly, especially to people like me. You don’t hear very good things about rural Southern Louisiana in liberal California, and I am confident they do not hear many good things about us. I was hesitant of course, worried about resistance and lack of openness to me and my friends. 

As it turned out it would be the exact opposite. Tom Fiddle and his friends opened their doors to us and welcomed us with open arms. Quite literally to think about it, as he personally taught me how to Waltz to a good Cajun song and offered us some of his boudin sausages; opening his home to this diverse group to be engaged with swamp culture. Louisiana Cajun culture was not the ignorant song that we normally hear, but this experience truly highlighted that what Cajuns are about is their love for the community; their intense love to preserve each other and uplift each other just like Gautreaux’s characters in the story that embodies this culture. Maybe a little bit of a dysfunctional community, they had each other’s back and would do anything to support each other. 

The way the Cajun people interacted and protected their youth like a village is not too far off from how the Black community depicted by Ernest Gaines in the 1940s acted. There are so many similarities in our culture, the way we uplift and want the best for each other. We are taught that we are so different from each other, but we are quite the same: looking for ways to preserve our culture and our people. 

And I realized something while spending time with these folks; their fight for freedom, fight to liberate themselves from oppression, and the way they lean into joy and happiness through celebration is so much like the Black community in New Orleans, and all over. I saw a connection between the Black experience and how we have struggled for liberation and a place to call our own, and through it all celebrated our lives through love and joy. The people of Cajun Louisiana have been able to achieve that, and they protect it at all costs. This is something I truly admire about them.

I don’t think it is just that, though. People of the oppressed groups have so much in common with one another; from the fight for freedom to living their lives the way they want them. But as well, as trying to thrive in a world that tells us no. We all have in common that we are marginalized by the majority and live with pride in being ourselves and finding community in that. We are labeled wrongly, stereotyped for not being part of the majority and being proud to defy the norm, creating such a negative image of our liberation and our cultures. I am so like the people of Cajun Louisiana, and they are so much like me. We both fight for a way for our people to thrive and will fight for that.

I had a chance to chat with a lovely friend of Tom’s, who talked about how much this community meant to him. That he loved Cajun Louisiana, because of his friends and his own family he has created with that community. He spoke with so much passion, and with such vigor that if you messed with him, then you are messing with the whole community and that isn’t something you want to face. I know this feeling and identify with it so much; through my love for Black Los Angeles and New Orleans, and the way it has formulated me into the woman I am. I see myself in him, from his passion to his need to protect this community because it has made him, him.

This love for the community is so beautiful.  I found so much of myself in Louisiana and found it repeatedly through the novels we read. 

This was a common theme throughout my journey through Louisiana. From The Awakening, An Interview with a Vampire, Coming Through Slaughter, The Moviegoer, A Lesson Before Dying, and Same Places, Same Things. In each new location from Grand Isle, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, and in each new book I had the opportunity to read, I was taught about the human desire for community, and when you find it and foster it, this connection grows into the family. I was always taught you can choose your family, and it is not always your blood family. Creating your family and your community is what is so beautiful about life, and maintaining those relationships is what makes life worth living. Having a community makes life worth living.

Community is more than just having people around you, it is what makes people heal. From Hurricane Katrina and the people in New Orleans who couldn’t receive help, to the Appalachia community that was forced down to the swamps of Louisiana. There is so much relating to the oppression of the Black people, to the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, and to the Trans and Queer people in America fighting their own battles now; we are all the same, looking for community and a place to heal and then, therefore, thrive. We heal when we find community, even when the oppression is so suffocating, that we can’t wake up in the morning, we push forward for the community. 

Repressed groups are often put against each other, making it a world where not all of us can exist, nor exist in peace together. There is so much the Black community can learn from the Cajun people, and the Cajun people from the Black community, if only we could see the similarities between each other. If we weren’t intentionally put against each other, imagine the world we could have? When people can find a common link between each other, and slow down and foster that; what a beautiful thing. 

I applied to this Maymester with ambitions to explore a new world, maybe native to my ancestors, and find myself. I found myself, and much more. I found a much happier me within the community I was able to foster around me, I found strength and leadership through them. Spending a deep 4 weeks with these wonderful people, and with Andrew’s guidance, I discovered a new love for life that was lost years ago to me. I am endlessly grateful. 

When we first landed in Louisiana, I was so excited because I never got the chance to learn about where my family comes from, and found a duality when not being able to merge my identities and feelings. Right when I got off the plane for the first time and heard the bellows of Jazz music and the joy in the second line parade, I felt a sense of true self. I found myself. I found myself along with more knowledge, more love, and more family. I am leaving here with so much more understanding about myself, and so much more love for myself and life. Like Grant and his experiences in Bayonne, I was confronted with my duality of self and how to merge those two. I found that merging those two is through the community I formed and that uplifts me, the sound of music coming from the French Quarter, the loving friends I made, and the love that is given so freely in New Orleans.

At this moment I am incredibly happy. But I am also scared, I am scared to lose this sense of self that I gained here. I talked to so many people and became friendly and more ambitious, kinder and more caring. Louisiana and Andrew have changed me so deeply, and I love who I am today. I found self-love in Louisiana. If anything, Gautreaux and the Cajun people of Louisiana have taught me something, although it is a different place at home, I can absolutely do the same things I found in New Orleans.

From the beauty of the constantly changing environment in Louisiana, and the pain and strife in the long and recent history, to the celebration and love and life, I’ve learned to be grateful for endings because rebirth is coming. Thank you, Louisiana, for everything.

Andrew, thank you for everything. I could not thank you more for your kindness and insights. I am leaving this trip so much different than I came on, and I am endlessly grateful for being able to absorb your knowledge and wisdom. You once said I was the heartbeat of this course (which made me cry) but thank you for allowing me to be. Without you, I do not think I would have been so brave for so many challenging moments or been encouraged to speak up, or just be authentically me. I have grown so much because of your lessons and guidance. Thank you for changing me and challenging me, and allowing for this experience to change me. Through your words, actions, and everything really, I learned to embrace myself and gained a beautiful group of friends while doing so. For that, I am so thankful. Words cannot express how honored and grateful I am to have had this time with you. Thank you.

Also, I am in the best shape of my life due to this trip? Please get a workout plan started.

A Reminder from Dr. Gaines

We are on the last legs of our bookpacking through Louisiana, finding ourselves in New Roads, a small town in Pointe Coupee Parish. New Roads has the charm of a small Southern town, picturesque against the False River, and everything seems like a movie. Everyone is super kind, and the town has the cutest small diners and shops, happy and sweet residents, and even the classic charismatic and approachable Sheriff. When we first arrived, we looked at the city courthouse, where we were met, with movie written dialogue, Sheriff René Thibodeaux, who is the epitome of southern hospitality. The sheriff greeted us with eagerness to know more about us and what we were doing in Pointe Coupee, and when we talked a little more he was so excited. We were invited inside to meet the Chief of Police, Kevin McDonald, and the Mayor of New Roads, Cornell Dukes after having a small conversation with the Sheriff, leading to another much more engaging and inspiring conversation; both telling us all a lot about their careers and their connections to Dr. Gaines. It was inspiring to see two Black city council members in a small Southern town like this, Mayor Dukes having a personal connection with Dr. Gaines’ niece and wanting to know more about what led us down to Pointe Coupee Parish and our experiences with Dr. Gaines’ novel. Sheriff Thibodeaux talked a lot about himself with his charismatic charm, and how he didn’t get the chance to meet Dr. Gaines until he was in college outside of Pointe Coupee Parish. The cute Southern charm was all there, and I soaked it all up until we were led by Tamy, one of the workers of the Courthouse, to the top floor of the Courthouse.

Outside the New Roads’ Courthouse.

Tamy led us into a small, dark elevator where we entered a new dimension; confronted with the Pointe Coupee Parish that Dr. Gaines knew. Tamy gave us a tour of the jailhouse that was used during the 1940s, it was dark and stuffy, lacking windows and fresh air flow. Grant, the main character of Dr. Gaines’ novel, spends a lot of time in Dr. Gaines’ fictional space of the jailhouse. Grant is attempting to convince Jefferson, an 18-year-old man sentenced to death, that he is more than a hog and that he is a real man, before his death sentence date. Being inside these unused jail cells and trying to imagine what Jefferson would have experienced was difficult, I could not imagine what Black and brown bodies go through in incarceration. The tiny cells, now filled with storage boxes of old cases that took place in Pointe Coupee Parish, along with the stuffy air, made me feel a bit nauseous. I couldn’t help but walk around and think about all the lives lost in the scattered boxes, the boxes filling up these tiny, inhumane cells. These cells were intentionally created for inmates to feel suffocated and like animals, created to feel cold, hard, and lack privacy. They now hold the lives of individuals lost, carelessly strewn about, and collecting dust. In our carceral state, we want to punish people who break laws, but how do we protect the people the laws are fundamentally made against? How do we explain the inequalities of Black and Brown bodies in the prison system today?

“it look like the lord just work for wite folks”

New Roads is the real setting of Dr. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying fictional town of Bayonne. Taking place in this 1948 town, it is not so much different from what is currently taking place all over America. I was enchanted by the sweetness of New Roads, but talking to Cheylon Wood, an archivist for the Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, I quickly remembered where we are in the world, and how these towns were a part of horror for my ancestors. This is what Bayonne, or New Roads, meant to Dr. Gaines, just as much as Los Angeles has shaped me. Not only was this where he grew up as a child, but his family was sharecroppers on the land. Gaines based his character Jefferson on a true story of a young man named Willie Francis, an 18-year-old who was executed twice. These true stories, and being in the location of them, were the most authentic form of bookpacking I have experienced thus far, Grant’s social gravity being something I relate too, and can feel in the air of New Roads.

Old Sugar Cane processing bowl that has been transformed into a pond at Dr. Gaines’ house. Dr. Gaines’ house sits on the same land that this family was enslaved on, and then continued to be enslaved through sharecropping.

After another sweet lunch with the city council, where a local reporter interviewed me, I was introduced to Cheyon Woods. Cheyon’s soft reminders that we were, indeed, in the South, brought my focus back into view. We talked about the South, compared to Central Los Angeles, where I grew up and talked about Blackness and Louisiana and how Louisiana has changed, reverting to old ways. A well-educated woman, when telling her about how people were eager to meet us in New Roads, she reminded us that this “southern hospitality” was also a means of keeping track of us and what we were really in New Roads for. I thought back to the sly comment that was made by Sheriff Thibodeaux, that he never met Dr. Gaines until he was “Hollywood”. Although it is Southern Hospitality, there is an underlying covert form of constant conformity for the Black community, silently suffocating the Black people and visitors. This “southern hospitality” is a way of maintaining social order, and maintaining a sense of chivalry in public, while systematic racism and institutionalized racism continue in private.

Mass incarceration directly correlates to this way of policing, or monitoring, Black and other diverse communities. This mass monitoring of the Black community is what Grant in the novel is trying to escape from; an oppressive society that thwarts his goals and what he really wants out of this life. But he is ultimately stuck, confined to the plantation, and teaching these children. Cheyon’s reminder that we are in the South disrupted my ignorant bliss, but it reminded me of what the South and these small towns represent to people, good or bad. Even if this isn’t the intent, our systems and history ultimately prevent it from not being that way.

Yeah, some people will say that they have a Black Mayor and a Black Chief of Police, but that doesn’t mean that things are equal. This doesn’t mean that the Mayor and Chief aren’t operating under these same oppressive systems we see in Grant’s life and Sheriff Paul in the novel. I am confident that Mayor Dukes and Chief McDonald had to work harder and smart than everyone around them. What got Mayor Dukes and Chief McDonald into their positions in the community, and the people that supported them and surrounded them with love and encouragement when things got rough, or who supported them through college and raised them to be leaders.

Dr. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, and my trip through New Roads have been one of the most influential parts of this trip for me. Dr. Gaines not only inspired me but reminded me why I wanted to go to Law School and why I continue to work so hard every day, but reminded me of my Blackness and dutifulness to uplift my community. I needed this reminder, invigorating me to work hard and be educated. I remembered that I am more than an individual, and I must uplift my community as well, in any capacity I can. Los Angeles has intensely shaped who I am as a person because I am uplifted by my community; as Cheylon said, I didn’t get here without it. I was reminded of the importance of how I developed into who I am, and what led me to the law and advocacy in the first place. I lost my passion for liberating my community and found myself so depressed the last few years in a predominately white space, without the ability to remember what this was all for. This reminder of who I am comes at the expense of reading and hearing real accounts of what my ancestors may have succumbed to. I feel relentlessly angry, knowing that Chief’s monitoring of me got bypassed as kindness, remembering this history; remembering Pointe Coupee used to be home to several plantations, but relentlessly as these forms of racism continue to thrive in different forms today. As they continue to thrive, it is my duty as a privilege person to come back and liberate my community.

“I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.”

Community means more than just my direct community in Los Angeles. It is the bigger picture, it is for all of the Black community. I am here to support the people that look down on me as a “sellout” and do not understand, but also the people who are looking for me to be a leader, and the people who do not know at all. It is uplifting for all the people who have come before me, and who are coming after me. Dr. Gaines, even beyond the grave, has a great impact on the people who learn about him, and who he is. I am forever grateful for this reminder.

"To lie with those who have no mark”

The grave of the amazing Ernest J. Gaines.

The Monteleone

There is a party culture in New Orleans that I was eager to experience along with everything else the city has to offer. I was even more eager because I didn’t have the opportunity to celebrate the end of my college career at USC, catching a flight straight to New Orleans after commencement. So, as I found two other graduates on this trip, oh, was it so important that we had a chance to celebrate together. And when the 3 of us found out about the legendary Monteleone carousel bar, the same bar that greats such as Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Tennessee Williams sat and drank in, we made that the location for our celebration.

As we arrive, we are in awe of the carousel itself, the live music, and the general liveliness of the place. It’s New Orleans at its finest, the doorman chatting you away, the jazz band playing, and swanky people from Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Mississippi chatting around with loud laughter. The bartender making drinks and people slowly going around the bar was such a thrill and beautiful sight to see. It took a while for us to find a seat at the bar, but when we did, we immediately ordered drinks and saluted ourselves. And as we made our slow rounds around the bar, we made friends around us in that New Orleans way; something I completely adore about this city. Everyone was so proud of us as graduates, and we got a shot sent our way in celebration.

There is something about the licensee of New Orleans, the fluidity of the Frenchness, that makes New Orleans a bit thrilling, and what New Orleans is. In the weeks we have been thriving in New Orleans, Andrew has covered so much of the history and culture that makes New Orleans a special place. We have talked about the Frenchness that exists in the culture, which creates this atmosphere of a laissez-faire way of life, the sexual way of living, and how people interact with each other; all creating the fluidity that exists in New Orleans. 

There is something more profound about the race relations of the South that impacts this French sensuality. As I sat on the carousel bar, 3 older white men to my right were enjoying their conversation. I found myself continuously catching eye contact with one of them until I bumped into one of his friends, and he began a little flirtish chat with me and told me his friend thought I was cute and he had a crush on me. Now, with the LA girl in me and the Frenchness of that moment, made me act a bit coquettish, and have this man buy me a drink.

I found myself in a long chat with an older man at this bar. This man, his name Trey was born and raised in Mississippi with the thickest accent to match. He asked me what I studied, and he gave me an anecdote about a philosophy class he once took. I leaned in and asked how old he was, with which he promptly replied 55. The academic in me continued to engage him in conversation. Hearing about ruining a sewage processing plant, how he was passionate about helping children, and how he thought I was more than cute and more than beautiful. There was a moment when Trey leaned over a little more and tried to touch my thigh, which led me to excuse myself, and he got into an intense conversation with the only male friend I had with me. Trey’s night with his friends intertwining with mine says so much about New Orleans, the South, and the license of white patriarchy that seeps through this city in ways I was not expecting to experience.

Trey from Mississippi came down to New Orleans this weekend for this state of licentiousness. For this ability to sit at a bar and talk to an “exotic” Black woman from California who could be his own daughter's age (which he told me repeatedly didn’t exist in his Mississippi drawl). But, I questioned if Trey from Mississippi would have taken the time to talk to me back home. Or if he felt he had the space to date a Black woman romantically when he was younger. Trey, raised in 1960s Mississippi, didn’t view me as a human, though. Trey didn’t ask me any questions about myself outside of what I studied and talked about himself the whole time but was completely able to hold a long conversation with my guy friend. Trey mentioned that he became a sloppy redneck when he was drunk, not focused on the fact he is saying this to a young Black woman. Trey had the license in French New Orleans, from the South, to fetishize me as a Black woman in a white space. Trey erased the existence of a human being from me and created pure objectification.

If it wasn’t any more obvious, Trey, a waste management professional, completely erased the existence of Cancer Alley. Cancer Alley, a place along the Mississippi River in the River Parish, is a predominantly Black community experiencing very high rates of cancer due to air pollution. The region between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is considered the sacrifice zone, where petrochemical production and waste occur. A Toxics Release Inventory showed Louisiana produced 8.9 billion pounds of waste in 2018 alone, and it was dumped near and around the River Parish. Trey called Cancer Alley bullshit.

Photo of Cancer Alley from Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/louisiana-cancer-alley-photos-oil-refineries-chemicals-pollution-2019-11

Andrew’s conversations about the Frenchness of New Orleans, the license and the licentiousness, and the hierarchical chivalry of the South all concluded on my night at the Monteleone. This history of New Orleans is in the atmosphere, and the history, making it so that a 55-year-old white man from Mississippi fetishizes a 23-year-old Black woman from Los Angeles and abstracts him enough to think he can flirt and pick her up. The delusions New Orleans offers are a wondrous moment for some.  It made the conditions in our society for a Black woman like me, to not have an existence outside of this man’s mind more than just an object. For a white man to talk about caring about kids while not caring about the environment, to deny the existence of racism while fetishizing a Black woman, and to have white supremacist ideas and to still want to have sexual relations with a Black woman because she is less than.

I found myself wondering if my friends wonder and analyze being perceived, and how people interact with them. I questioned if Trey thought I was maybe an escort waiting for his attention. I don’t have many thoughts outside of this analysis of the night and I laugh at the thought that he may be thinking about me as a fantasy, and I am studying him writing a blog. I wonder if I am too in my head like Holden from Catcher and the Rye, or Binx from The Moviegoer. Sometimes it is hard to write my thoughts about these situations clearly, but the duality that exists in the South and the French is a duality that exists in the minds of the people of the South, and everywhere around me. The intersection of racism, white supremacy, and white patriarchy is an interesting place to exist in, and I often wonder how the white male mind justifies it. It is a difficult identity to know when you are not being afforded humanity but to also play with the licentiousness that gives me simultaneously. I think this is why it is hard for me to afford empathy to characters like Binx and Holden. My identity is a duality.

My night at the Monteléone was interesting, to say the least. 

What a Wonderful World

What A Wonderful World

I see streets of community and love, 

I see pain and suffering, anger and strive

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

I can’t help but appreciate every aspect of life walking around New Orleans. There is a jena se quoi I have never experienced before. Everything around me is a constant reminder of celebration and of horrific pain and suffering. There is a juxtaposition of the painful past but a celebration of rebirth and renewal everywhere around me in New Orleans. I see it in how the city paints beautiful murals and maintains rooted history even when Hurricane season comes every year and wipes away homes and loved ones. I see it in the Second Line Parades in the Treme, where the community celebrates itself so intensely and with so much love. Yet, parades take place right along the streets where they are heavily policed and are living paycheck to paycheck, increasing the levels of death and poverty in such a vibrant community. I hear it in the Jazz music played, in the passion that the musicians play with, the pain that exists in the bellows of the music. The expressions of Jazz and the Blues, the lives behind the musicians making the music, and the history of the trumpet buuuup. 

I see it in an amazing vibrant community of New Orleans, right downriver from Plantations with ugly history, that is often attempted to be erased but is heavily part of why this city is what it is today. This pain and celebration are what makes New Orleans what it is, and what creates the experiences of Black people who are heavily influenced in making New Orleans what it is, creating the raw culture of expression, love, pain, and death; everything that encompasses life and what makes it so wonderful. As I take on New Orleans, through the food, culture, and music, the more I feel like I belong, the more I find myself and parts of me, and the more I can say what a wonderful world. 

As we entered the wonderful place of New Orleans, I was 3 days away from my 23rd birthday. 3 days away from aging just a little more, and entering a new stage of maturity and reflection. This being the first birthday away from my closest family and friends, it really felt like a growing moment for me. I was eager to make plans for Bourbon St, Frenchman St, and other fun places while balancing my hunger for cajun food, beignets, and crawfish etouffe. It was also a state of reflection, a reminder of the lack of immortality in my life. As we read Interview with a Vampire by the late, great Anne Rice, I was struct with a question about being immorality young, and never growing up. As I age, I learn more that my perspective on life is wrapped around my experiences, and aging is what makes life worth living.

“As I get a little older, I realize life is perspective. And my perspective may differ from yours.” - Kendrick Lamar, The Heart Part 5

Tombs at Lafayette Cemetery No. 2

And Death. Death is an important part of what makes culture what it is, and what makes life so precious. Without death, we aren’t able to celebrate life, and what makes life so living. Without death, we aren’t able to reflect on what gave it all meaning. The history up the Mississippi River of what life used to be like for Black people in New Orleans, enslavement and captivity. This upriver from the vibrant and loving community of Black people that thrive, and are so familial compared to the culture in Los Angeles. The Treme’s celebration of life through the Second Line Parades taught me that this transition from enslavement to freedom, although still a struggle in life, itself is a sign for celebration.

The tombs that rise above the ground in gothic Catholic style are right along the route of these celebrations are a representation to everyone of how short life is, and how we should enjoy it while we are still here.

Thinking about Death specifically, makes me ponder the life of Buddy Bolden. Bolden’s life is an embodiment of Jazz: the sex, love, and pain of a musician’s life are worth living for, and worth interpreting how it tells us a story of their life, but also the communities they thrived in. The abandonment, the deceit, and tricks. The music he made is the narrative of New Orleans, the narrative of the Black community in New Orleans. His cornet acts as a dialogue to the story of segregation and racism, and what these conditions have created. Decades of pain, decades of lynching, and second-class citizenship. But the people of the Treme and Storyville, the predominately Black, red-light district during the 1900s New Orleans, continued to thrive and celebrate living. Bolden’s music embodies this and tells the story of this representation, of New Orleans. These stories embody me, as a Black woman, trying to find the meaning of what life is living for.

Preservation Hall, Jazz Performance

Pink house in the Garden District! My favorite.

This representation and history; the sex, pain, music, and culture is the blood in the veins of New Orleans and makes it the city it is today. All of New Orleans’ historical literary history, to its history of enslavement, and too now; the aging of this city continues to shape her beauty, all working simultaneously. We have explored New Orleans for a week, exploring the debauchery of Bourbon St, the wonders of the Garden District, to the poverty of the Treme. Death and youth are what are heavily pondering my mind as we tour centuries-old tombs, as my birthday comes and passes, and as I see the weathered faces of the community here, all in tandem with reading Interview with The Vampire. Louis, the vampire being interviewed, gives a long history of his life, and his experiences, to conclude that internal life is not what it is made out to be – all for Louis to conclude that his life is not worth living, human mortal life is. In this poetic way, Louis is suggesting that death and aging is what keeps us alive, keeps us hungry to live, and what keeps us celebrating life.

New Orleans is an embodiment of birth and rebirth, it is in the air, in the uprooting of the trees, and the broken cobblestone on the road and on the streets. It is in the hurricanes that come every season and clears away and makes space for anew. I hear it in the brass bands playing in the French Quarter, and the artist singing their songs of love and pain. I see it in the aura and in the literary expressions of the writers that have existed here. It is in the music that is created, in the celebrations of life, in the second-line parades, and in the way, the Black community celebrates life after death. It that wonderous jena se quoi I mentioned earlier.

Being a Black woman in America, and experiencing life in New Orleans has given me more context to living. It has taught me how to live and age gracefully, by embracing community, music, culture, and love. As I age, I learn more about what is important to me and what I need to learn. Being a Black woman also means I am stripped of my femininity, and of my ancestors. Learning about myself means embracing these bad things, and embracing the community, music, and life that can help it all define me as I continue to grow.

The life of Buddy Bolden, of jazz, and the life of Lestat and Louis tell me a story of the beauty of life. How the ups and downs, the pain and suffering, and the celebration all communicates the wonder of life. I see the beauty in how community shapes you, and how a village can literally raise you. The cycles of death and rebirth in this city show me that as I age and live life, I gain perspective through experiences, community, and love. To gain these insights, I have to go through cycles of pain, confusion, and rebirth. And through this culture, music, and love of this city, I learn that this all is what makes life worth living. As I age, I can’t help but think to myself. What a wonderful world.

My Own Awakening

“She could only realize that she herself – her present self – was in some way different from the other-self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect.”
- Kate Chopin

European capitalistic way of life is unsustainable and leads to burnout. Living to work, constant availability, rushing, appealing to norms, and living life in an inward capacity, leads to life and time being work and not developing a quality way of life. It leads to depression, unhappiness, and an inability to be fulfilled. I know it all too well. I was living a life in constant motion and restraint, unable to be genuinely myself. I limited myself from being me, being expressive, making decisions for me. I know the feeling of not being able to express myself in a way that would be understood, being on the impossible pedestal of unhappiness, and having to show up for other people as a woman, friend, sister, or as a lover. I know the feeling of intense emotions, anger at the inability to change, and feeling lost. 

I came to Grand Isle in the same state as Edna, a woman in tightly held by societal norms and her roles to other people, who wants to find herself and break away from the pressure of the life she created, carrying a primal need to change the circumstances of her life. Someone who was finally feeling different, a momentum change to be the person that she full wanted to be; different from the person I was yesterday. I relate to Edna and The Awakening she had on the beaches of Grand Isle. Kate Chopin’s ability to explain the deep emotions of life, society, expectations, and reality on the beaches where her awakening occurred, simultaneously with mine, was a fantastic experience I didn’t see coming. 

Flying over the Mississippi!

I hugged my parents and my siblings on May 14th, driving over the Mississippi River, and finally landing in New Orleans. After driving hours listening to indie music and having a light conversation, I arrived in Grand Isle. I, and everyone around me, was exhausted from a day worth of traveling, leaving our busy lives in Los Angeles and USC behind. It was only that morning that I had said goodbye to my family and embarked on a journey that I knew would change me, something I was hungry for after two years of heavy work at USC. As a graduating transfer student, I was leaving behind a rough semester of dealing with mental illness. I was on the flight over, caught up in my mindset of worrying about my GPA and living up to my high expectations. As a pre-law student from a low-income, marginalized background, I always had something to live up to prove myself in the back of my head. Waking the next morning and opening my bedroom door to the beauty of the beach, the quietness of the house, and the overall calmness of the Great Isle, I had too recheck in with myself to make sure it was all real. It was so surreal, walking down the path to the beach and experiencing the intense emotions I know all too well, but through the writing of Chopin and the life of Edna. 

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clearing, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”

- Kate Chopin

That morning, we walked down to the beach, felt the hot sand between our toes, and felt the warm gulf water around our legs. We walked across the water, getting a breaker of rocks with much little marine life. We relaxed on the rocks and looked out to the water, talking about our lives and tattoos and suddenly getting a glimpse of a family of dolphins making their way across the gulf. There was so much beauty in the nature around us. The water was so calm, and just the serene silence of the gulf was intoxicating. Watching the family drive their buggies around the isle, finding places to park on the beach, and the dogs running by. But there is something particular about the water, and I was similarly drawn to the water like Edna. 

The water draws you into Grand Isle, there is a sort of calmness that resolves over this whole beach town, and there is a sort of sleepiness that forces you too slow down and be reflective. I found myself constantly looking out toward it, yearning to be back in it, on the shore, and enjoying the silence, the pause you receive. Juxtaposed with the calmness of the sea, the wreckage left by the Hurricane Ida surrounds Grand Isle. It is mad how nature can be so beautiful, yet so sad, painful, and moving so fast like the winds of a hurricane. Your plans can go into disarray, people die, people leave, a pandemic and things can get ugly, and you are thrown around, losing your purpose and yourself. I think this is the same awareness that Chopin had with her complications with mental illness and the knowledge that a hurricane completely wiped out an island she used to visit, Cheniere. I think this because I had the same awakening and awareness that nature can make you lose everything in seconds, even when you are already struggling with what you are facing. 

Throughout my time in Grand Isle and reading The Awakening, I felt impossibly connected to Edna. I found myself rooting for her in her journey to find herself, the same journey I found myself on leaving Los Angeles for the first time and what I wanted on this trip. Like Edna, I was longing for a change: from the roles in life that I had a responsibility to the societal expectations and family and relationship expectations. I had moments where I destroyed things and felt guilty. I have made some silly decisions, all in the namesake of feeling some control over nature. Over how it could be so beautiful one day, and seconds later, your world collides with another and makes a change forever. How you can feel like you are on the right path, but you suddenly realize you aren’t. As a white woman of the 19th century, Edna has similarities to me as a Black woman of 2022. Although I have a significantly different lived experience than this woman, we relate because of how society has prevented us from being indeed us. We both want to engage in the most radical act of loving ourselves and choosing you for the first time. Although Kate Chopin is not a Black woman, nor do they have the experiences of a Black woman in 2022; this quote I am leaving you with captures ultimately The Awakening Edna had, and I am in the midst of. Radical love comes from radical decisions that might trample on the little lives around you. Women have so much power and strength that we need to return to ourselves.

“As a black woman, the decision to love yourself just as you are is a radical act. And I'm as radical as they come.” 

Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant