Cajun Pride

I was waiting in line at the Tabasco Factory gift shop when I was deciding what to get my roommate as a gift. We have a tradition of getting each other dumb presents whenever we travel. I picked up these ridiculous tobacco sunglasses that were clearly meant for a child. I immediately thought: these are perfect for Saphia! I was explaining to those of us in line about our little tradition. She was born and raised in Houston, Texas but could not be further from a Texan. She comes from a very traditional Muslim family, and it has always been a running joke between us how she was raised in this very conservative Southern culture.  Given that I also could not be further from a Texan, she brought me back a “Don’t Mess With Texas” t-shirt when she came home from Spring Break. I was using this as an example/justification for buying the overpriced sunglasses when I heard the cashier make a snarky noise. She looked at me funny and with a little judgement after telling this story. At the time, I really didn’t think anything of it. Then, just a few hours later, I started reading Floyd’s Girl by Tim Gautreaux.

At the center of this story is the clear tension and divide between Texans and the Cajun people of Louisiana. They see Texas as a wild and uncivilized desert where the people are completely reckless. Cajuns seem to be prideful in their culture. The characters in Floyd’s Girl see themselves as men and women of God. They see themselves as much more civilized and stronger compared to these wild Texans. Even the plot of the story itself is centered around these Texans acting uncivilized. Floyd is a proud Cajun man whose daughter Lizette has been taken by his wife’s husband to come live with them in Texas. As Floyd runs after these men to get his daughter, readers witness how violent this man from Texas becomes not only with Floyd and the other Cajun men, but Lizette too. Others from the community regardless of their age or ability ran to help Floyd get his daughter to safety. Our time in Cajun Louisiana showed me less of the Texan vs. Cajun feud , but focused more on the pride that the Cajun people have in their culture.

“She knew Texans had some kind of God, but they didn’t take him too seriously, didn’t celebrate him with feast days and days of penance, didn’t even kneel down in their churches on Sunday”

— Same Places, Same Things, Tim Gautreaux

One of our first experiences with authentic Cajun culture was at the Tante Marie Café in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Andrew had explained that this was a local gathering point where people can come together to enjoy food and listen to music. The band consisted of a group of men and women playing the guitar, fiddle, violin, etc. They also had one man who occasionally would sing. This music completely uplifted the room. Even though people weren’t overtly dancing, I could sense the happiness and carefreeness in the room brought by the music. However, I think the biggest sense of Cajun Pride I’ve experienced thus far is in the food. Cajun food is so flavorful. It takes the most mundane dish, adds so many seasonings and spices to it creating a culinary masterpiece. Because so much of the culture is centered around food, it has created a sense of community. I saw large tables grow in number, and people bounced from table to table to talk to one another. I got this same sense in Floyd’s Girl through the character of Mrs. Boudreaux. When she first learns that Lizette has been taken to Texas, her first thoughts are if she will be able to eat good Cajun food. Her very first fear was that Lizette wouldn’t be able to get turtle soup piquante, gumbo, okra, or crawfish. Food is so embedded in the culture here. The Cajun people have taken basic dishes and turned them into something completely different, and that makes them proud. You can get this sense throughout the restaurant when people were gratified seeing how their food attracted a full house for lunch. Mrs. Boudreaux’s first fear was about Lizette not having Cajun food because this would cause her to lose part of her Cajun soul. By sitting in the Tante Marie, I could feel how jams like this are the heart and soul of Cajun Louisiana. They bring people together to celebrate their culture and each other’s company. Food is absolutely essential to the Cajun culture.

Our food at the Tante Marie Cafe!

“Living without her food would be like losing God”

— Same Places, Same Things, Tim Gautreaux

Music is also a huge part of Cajun culture, and something that they take great pride in. On our last day in Cajun Louisiana, we had the opportunity to take part in a traditional jam at Tom’s Fiddle and Bow Shop in Arnaudville, Louisiana. It is a quaint town where everyone seems to know each other. However, it is different from many of the other rural towns we’ve visited on our trip. Arnaudville’s beauty is not physical, but its beauty comes from the people themselves. At Tom’s jam, we saw a community come together over its shared love of music. They were so excited to have us come visit and show a group of outsiders how special their talents are. I could see in the way that Tom and the other musicians talked to us how proud they were of preserving the culture of Cajun music. As we listened in on the jam, I struck up a conversation with Janice Landry, Ray Landry’s wife. Ray and Janice own a shop in Lafayette where they have weekly jams on the weekends. She was so proud of her husband and spoke so highly of his music. Janice showed me photos from their most recent jam and was so excited to point out to me how many musicians turned out. She is so prideful in her husband for all his efforts to spread and preserve Cajun music, and rightfully so. After only talking for a few moments, she asked to friend me on Facebook so I could continue to see future jams. Her Facebook feed is full of advertising and adoring over her husband’s music. My new Facebook friend’s enthusiasm made me eager to keep up with their lives and listen to videos of Ray’s music. It seems so cliché, but Tom’s jam was absolutely one of the highlights of the trip. I loved how full of life and prideful everyone was about their culture and wanting to share it with us. We weren’t just observers, but part of the jam itself. I look back so fondly on our hours spent in Arnaudville.

“Who would give up French music and rock and roll for country?”

— Same Places, Same Things, Tim Gautreaux

I kept thinking back on Floyd’s Girl during our time at Tom’s Fiddle and Bow Shop. When Floyd talks about his wife, he can’t even fathom why she would leave Louisiana and all its culture for the wild west of Texas. Cajuns take such pride in their music and food that celebrating anything else is unfathomable. How can you leave such a strong community? He is eager to bring his daughter back not just to have her in his life, but to keep her intact with her Cajun roots. Floyd even sets aside a part of his small salary to give his daughter music lessons. Every aspect of Cajun culture is around today because of the pride that these people have for their roots. The Cajun culture runs deep, and I am so grateful that I got to experience this firsthand.

Tom’s Fiddle and Bow Shop!

Beyond the White Picket Fence

I hate the term “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”. It’s something that I think we all have heard in English and History classes growing up. This phrase served to allow us to envision how people felt way back then, or at least, that was the intent of it. It is used to make students feel like they have a better understanding of the lives of others living before them. This is such an ignorant mindset. I know that I can’t imagine. I will never understand. Coming on this Bookpacking trip, part of me wondered if that would be the goal: that reading these books in the places they are set would solely be to relate to the characters. However, I have found the experience to be so much more…

 A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines has been my favorite novel to Bookpacking, and not because of the book itself. I was so appreciative of how much time we spent learning and discussing Ernest Gaines as an author. We first went to the city of New Roads, which is where Ernest Gaines was born and raised. It is a small Southern town that follows the False River. From first glance, it looks picturesque and perfect. New Roads seems like the epitome of the South from its architecture to the people. However, Gaines never focuses on this aspect of Bayonne in the novel. He never describes Bayonne using any descriptive imagery. The only time he tries to define the town of Bayonne is in the beginning of the novel. Gaines talks about a divided town, one that separates people based on their race. He talks about how the church, movie theater, and schools for the white people are uptown, while these same buildings for black people were in the back of the town. Anybody driving through New Roads (like we did initially) only sees uptown. Even to this day, the city of New Roads does not want to acknowledge “the back of town”. They want to leave people who drive by having the buildings uptown as their definition of New Roads. It does feel quite fake at times. Gaines barely talks about the uptown of Bayonne in his book. Most of the places referenced in A Lesson Before Dying take place in this back of town. He changes the spotlight and perspective of New Roads/Bayonne. By reading this book, I didn’t look at New Roads only in the way that it wants us to view it. I didn’t look out the window and look at “uptown” New Roads. I tried to look at Gaines’ Bayonne. Like we have observed in many Southern towns, they want to hide their history and look as though their town is a happy place. Gaines’ novels disrupt this. They remind us to look past these picturesque lakefront houses with the white picket fences. We don’t take these rural towns as they want us to. Gaines writes about a Bayonne that rarely describes its beauty, because sometimes we forget to look past the beauty ourselves.

During our first day in New Roads, we had the opportunity to visit the courthouse and see the old jail cells. When our guide Tammy took us up to where the cells once were, there were boxes full of records everywhere. We had to brush away cobwebs to go through the unorganized files that told so much of the history of this town. I remember Andrew mentioning how somebody could probably dedicate their entire career just to going through the history in these boxes. This then led me to ask Tammy a question. Is there any plan for New Roads to digitize or make these records accessible? She replied by saying that they didn’t have any plans to do so. I was shocked to think that these files were sitting up here just collecting dust. So many stories, so many lives, and so many historic accounts. A lot of the history of New Roads could be found in the reports living in the courthouse. Yet, much of this, again, is history that the town of New Roads doesn’t want to acknowledge as part of their history. They want us to see the stunning outside of the courthouse building, which houses a huge part of the town’s history on the inside. New Roads wants to move forward, when really, so much of it is still stuck in the past. They’ve kept all this hidden away, and most strangers passing through have no idea what that courthouse holds. It appears New Roads did not want to admit anything wrong with their town. A Lesson Before Dying wants to bring forth this history that the town wants to ignore. Gaines does this in such a powerful way. While we were walking around the cell staring at these records, I kept thinking about the scene in A Lesson Before Dying where the entire town can hear the buzzing of the electric chair. They make comments like “my God, the whole town can hear that thing” or “The sound was too horrible. Just too horrible”. The sound forces people to acknowledge what is happening in their town. It made people uncomfortable, and they wanted to forget, but they couldn’t. They had to live with knowing what was about to happen down the street, rather than just pretend it wasn’t happening. It seems like a stretch, but to me it felt like keeping those stories in those cells was the town’s way of not wanting to see itself as anything other than a peaceful and sleepy Southern town.

I think that this was my favorite book to Bookpack because of how much time we spent learning about Ernest Gaines as an author. We visited his home which he built after purchasing the land which he was born and raised on. He has preserved so much history. We first went into a church that Ernest and Diane had restored based on the original building that Ernest was taught in living in the quarter. We were given insight into where Grant taught his students. There weren’t any desks, just a few church pews. Grant’s frustration with his limits as an educator were made apparent. After seeing the classroom, we went to the graveyard. The people buried here included Ernest and his family, as well as many people who worked on the property. They were given proper tombstones that told their names and stories. Enslaved people who worked in the same place were buried in the sugarcane fields where their families don’t know where they lie. Ernest Gaines’ efforts of bringing this history out into the open started to create a new way of seeing New Roads for me. This has always been there, but the tireless work of the Gaines family has brought it to light.

In the beginning of my blog, I mention how I hate the term “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”. I thought about this a lot when we were in New Roads. The definition of Bookpacking (at least in my eyes) was to have a better understanding of a novel by visiting the places they are set in. I think for many of us, this means trying to relate to or understand the characters. However, I think there are some books where this can lead to ignorance. Standing in those jail cells, I’m sure people tried to think that they understood Jefferson’s character better: that they could put themselves in his shoes by standing behind the bars for maybe 15 seconds. But we can’t. I think it’s ridiculous for somebody’s takeaway from Bookpacking A Lesson Before Dying to be that they understood Jefferson better. I know that I will never understand. Honestly, I struggled to write this blog, because I wasn’t sure how I was connecting my experience reading the book to my time in New Roads. I realized that it had less to do with the novel itself, but more of the legacy that Ernest Gaines left on the town. He brought the “back of town” as he calls it into the spotlight. I looked at New Roads in a new light because of him. This was the first book where I was able to create my own definition of Bookpacking. For me, it is not about “relating” to the characters. Bookpacking for me is understanding the author’s perspective and how they brought the spotlight to communities or areas that are often left out of the conversation. We all have our own way to Bookpack, and I think reading A Lesson Before Dying showed me how I can take away the most from this experience.

Thank You for the Music

“Without jazz, life would be a mistake”

— Boris Vian

Lights. Camera. Action! When you turn any corner in New Orleans, everyone looks like they are shooting a movie. People don’t walk through the streets here: they dance. Here, people stop to listen and enjoy the live music. The city seems to have a rhythm to itself, because I too find myself dancing through these streets. There are times where I don’t even realize that I have a small bounce in my walk or start swaying side to side. It’s easy to feed off the energy of those walking down the street with you. I really do understand why this city is so special now. I’ve never seen another place where people dance walking down the street. It truly is magical, and something that couldn’t happen anywhere else but The Birthplace of Jazz.

However, I think to just refer to New Orleans as The Birthplace of Jazz is a disservice. This place is a thriving capital for jazz. Jazz is the heart and soul of this place, and this is something that anybody walking around can feel. The live street bands draw in crowds and bring people together. Everyone dances in any way that the music makes them feel. I can’t help but join any crowd I see, watching how everyone expresses themselves through movement. Everyone moves differently, however, it creates this beautiful blend. Between the music and the crowd, everyone works together to create a sort of harmony. From my time in New Orleans, I have learned that this is the epitome of jazz. Michael Ondaatje hits this exactly in his novel Coming Through Slaughter, which tells the story of the man who put jazz on the map, Buddy Bolden. The book itself is structured in a very chaotic way: there are no quotations, there are time jumps without any prompts, and it is often unclear who is speaking. While I thought this would frustrate me as a reader, this ended up being the reason I appreciated the book so much. It truly reflected the chaotic yet syncopated nature of jazz music. Jazz is so complex, yet at first glance, it seems so simple. I love that Bookpacking and reading Coming Through Slaughter gave me the experience to truly understand the complexities of jazz.

Here are some photos I took at Preservation Hall, one of the first places we experienced a live performance! The two photos on the right are taken from Google.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was watching the Moneywasters Second Line Parade. I really had no clue what to expect when Andrew invited us to attend. As we watched the floats and the crowds walk by, I was just trying to absorb all the action around me. Everyone was unified over their excitement of the music. People were full of life and celebration, moving their bodies however the music made them feel. It was so exciting to watch a sea of people interpret the music in so many ways but still manage to create a sense of unity. And then, we became a part of the crowd. Everyone was encouraging me to move to the beat and become a part of the crowd. I noticed myself start to sway, throw my hands in the air, and just take in everything around me. This was something I truly had forgotten to do.

When people learn that I grew up as a dancer, they assume that I can dance wherever I hear music. They assume that I can move freely on the spot. However, my career as a competitive dancer really restricted me from this. My instructors always taught me how to move my body, and from there it would just be memorizing how they interpreted the music. Especially as a ballet dancer, I had little creative freedom. I, like many others, fell into dance for my love of music. I loved the way that people let music take over their body, and then express those feelings through movement. It’s sad to see looking back now how I lost the ability to just feel music. Dance and movement really became a job to me. I would come to class and blindly follow my instructors, and many of my fellow dancers felt the same way. We would memorize the same routine, and all look uniform. Looking uniform was the ideal in competitive dance. It is so discouraging of individualism. Competitive dancers are taught to be robots of each other: we are all supposed to look and move the same. This rewired my mind, and I lost my love to just move to music. Burnt out from the cutthroat and toxic dance community, I officially quit when I was 16 years old. I lost my creative outlet and something I had known for most of my life. As I moved on, I still craved an opportunity to move freely. Coming to New Orleans really did reopen that aspect of my life.

I found this quote by Boris Vian that I put at the top of my blog that I felt reflected a lot of my experience with music thus far in New Orleans. Being surrounded by a city where everyone celebrates music made me realize that it is a powerful way to bring people together. Everyone expresses themselves in unique ways, and it all comes together so beautifully. As Boris Vian says, a life without jazz would lose a lot of this magic. For me personally, it would’ve been a mistake. I would’ve lost the love I have for moving to the music. Whether we are at Preservation Hall, parading with the Moneywasters, listening to live music on Frenchman Street or dancing on Bourbon, jazz lights up this city. Thank you, New Orleans, for teaching me how to just move freely again.

Hiding in Plain Sight

New Orleans: The Big Easy, The Crescent City, The Birthplace of Jazz, Crawfish Town. These nicknames show the glitz and glamour that we all think of when we talk about New Orleans. It is colorful, vibrant, and a city of celebration that attracts people from all walks of life. We know New Orleans for Mardi Gras, for live music, and as a culinary capital of the United States. However, many of us visiting this city don’t acknowledge the dark history that all this liveliness was built upon. Our journey Bookpacking thus far has allowed us to truly see the trauma of New Orleans, much of which is hiding in plain sight…

 After arriving to the city at night, we decided to explore and get some food. Since we had been in Grand Isle starring into nothingness for 3 days, I was taken aback by all the bright lights. Everywhere I looked I saw crowds of people, live jazz bands, and colorful signs. This is the New Orleans that I have always known and heard about. It is the New Orleans that comes up on Google Images. It is the New Orleans that brings such joy to those experiencing it. I knew that New Orleans had a haunted side, but often becomes part of the tourist culture (i.e. the ghost tours). Reading Interview With The Vampire and thoroughly discussing the history of this place in seminar gave me a better look into the actual roots of The Big Easy.

For our first full day in New Orleans, we headed over to the French Quarter to explore this infamous part of the city. I remember feeling like I had time traveled. The buildings and roads looked completely untouched, and I got a first-hand glimpse into what life would’ve been like for the Creoles of New Orleans way back then. The area is still bustling with tourists, live performances, shops, and restaurants of every cuisine. From first glance, it seemed as though the French Quarter had this magical sense about it since its very founding. In fact, while reading Interview With the Vampire, Louis describes the opulence of this city, ignoring all the trauma once found on these very same streets.

Both photos taken from Google Images

“…a figure dressed for evening appeared at the railings, the glitter of jewels at her throat, her perfume adding a lush evanescent spice to the flowers in the air.”

— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

New Orleans served as a symbol of wealth: if you lived in the French Quarter, it was a sign that you were successful. Even to this day, the French Quarter gives this same feeling. However, as we walked down these streets, I couldn’t help but think of the people whose stories will never be known, as they were the foundation to creating such a beautiful city still standing to this day. This is the French Quarter that Louis describes, and like many other wealthy individuals at the time, ignored the darkness that this city also created. His words help contribute to this culture of only focusing on the opulence and wealth of history. It is only through Bookpacking this city that we understood the trauma of the past (to the best that we can).

 A few days later we took a trip to the Garden District. The Garden District was the area where the Americans lived, and it is full of these beautiful mansions. The sidewalks feel untouched, with the roots of the oak trees bursting through the cobblestones. I felt like I had entered some dystopic fantasy world where everyone lived these lavish lives. As I continued to marvel at the architecture, I discovered that many of these were former plantations. The pain and suffering of the enslaved people working on these pieces of land were masked by the luxury of these huge estates. Anybody walking through the area would unaware of the historical atrocities that happened right before their eyes. Even Louis, as he describes himself walking through this area, ignores the fact that this was the center of the worst part of American History.

“I could still find in the Uptown Garden District…the moonlight under its magnolia trees…I knew the same sweetness and peace I’d known in the old days…There were the honeysuckle and the roses, the glimpse, and the glimpse of Corinthian columns against the stars; and outside the gate were dreamy streets, other mansions…it was a citadel of grace.”

— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

Bookpacking often allows us to feel better connected to our surrounding areas, but to be completely honest, Louis’ words made me feel more disconnected from New Orleans. He was describing what I see on the surface, but it is so hard for me not see the years of oppression hiding in plain sight behind these beautiful mansions. To be honest, it helps bury this history even more. I found it hard for myself to focus on the charm of the Garden District, when all I could think about was these unacknowledged stories.

The next day on our way to Storyville, we took a walk through the Central Business District. In seminar, we talked about how the very area that our hotel is in was where the slave auction houses were housed. Society’s elite living in the French Quarter did not want this “distastefulness” near their homes, so they made the Business District just outside of the French Quarter the hub for the slave market. While walking around, I remember all of us saying “It looks like Wall Street”, or “I feel like I’m in Manhattan right now!”. A street filled with wealth and success was built upon the buying and selling of other humans. There is no acknowledgement in the Central Business District of what came before these banks. Any person working in these buildings or walking passed would be completely ignorant not knowing that what happened over 150 years ago on this very same street. It’s moments like these that I am grateful to be experiencing New Orleans through the lens of a Bookpacker. We can feel all the exciting aspects of the city while acknowledging the historical obscenities that once happened on the very sidewalks that we step foot on.

Walking through the Central Business District

My experience Bookpacking through New Orleans has had a much more profound effect on me than traveling regularly. I can look past and see the deeply rooted traumatic history that this city has created. Cities such as New Orleans don’t want to acknowledge their past, leaving many visitors unaware of the extent of it. Uncovering and understanding this history in the exact places that they occurred has been a huge reason why I have enjoyed being in New Orleans so far. Everything that we’ve done so far only makes me more excited to do the same in other parts of Louisiana.

Creating Community on Grand Isle

As soon as we crossed the Mississippi River, we swapped out the city-life we all know well for the rural swamplands of Louisiana, and I had no idea what to expect. I was taking in every little bit of scenery from the mosquitos to the steamboats. While chomping on some questionable Popeyes and starring into the darkness, I tried to fantasize about what Grand Isle looked like in the light. I can’t remember the last time I truly relaxed, and despite not knowing what Grand Isle looked like, I had a feeling it would be the perfect place to truly let go…

Watching a gorgeous sunset as we crossed the Mississippi towards Grand Isle.

Waking up beachfront that very first morning, there was only one thing on my mind: I NEED COFFEE. As Ashley and I made our trek to Joe-Bob’s (my new favorite restaurant), I immediately noticed the sense of community and the Southern hospitality I was always hearing about. The employees knew every customer by name and were laughing with one another. Their welcoming nature felt like a warm embrace, with every other word out of the cashier’s mouth either being “sweetie” or “thank you”. It was a very different atmosphere than I am used to having grown up in Southern California, where everyone seems to compete with one another over the most mundane things. This sense of hospitable nature made me very eager to truly be immersed in Louisiana culture.

After our experience at Joe-Bob’s, I was shocked to hear during seminar about the divide between American and Creole cultures in Louisiana during the late 19th century. An area that seemed so unified was built upon two polarizing cultures. Americans and Creoles have different values, traditions, and ethics, so how is any unification able to occur? It’s no wonder Edna felt so distant from the Creole community on Grand Isle! It immediately made me think of my own background. Growing up in an Iranian American household, I was brought up with two different ideals and often felt conflicted. French culture reminds me a lot of Persian culture. Both are family-oriented, place a huge emphasis on arts and food, and are extremely social. The French and the Persians love to throw a party! However, I could in a sense understand Edna a lot when she couldn’t relate to people like Madam Ratignolle. She truly embodies the ideal Creole woman, someone who Edna thought she needed to be but truly wasn’t her. Because part of my fundamental identity is American, there are parts of the Persian culture that I can’t relate to and doesn’t make me feel as connected to my Iranian heritage. However, growing up has allowed me to create this sort of blend of the two, giving me multiple cultural perspectives. I think as Louisiana has grown over time, it has done the same. But the question still bothered me: What about Grand Isle specifically has created this sense of community?

I thought I would leave Grand Isle with this question unanswered, but as I began to read The Awakening staring at the same shoreline that Edna once did, I started to put the pieces together. The environment of relaxation and excitement that the ocean brings is a universal feeling. When everyone comes to a beautiful island like Grand Isle, they can’t help but be fascinated with the water. This sense of peace can help create a much more welcoming atmosphere, where time really seems to slow down. As I turned to Chapter 6, my first true experience with Bookpacking occurred when Edna describes her view of the ocean.

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude”

— Kate Chopin

As I stared into this seductive sea that Edna mentioned, I too fell under its spell. To me, the Gulf was a little like the unknown. Having only seen the Pacific Ocean before, I was so confused by the lack of huge waves and the warm water. Our group collectively (maybe all swayed by Kate Chopin’s words) followed this intriguing calling and went into the water together. We all were shocked by how shallow, flat, and easy it was to walk in the water. We made our way to the rocks and sat out there for hours talking about anything and everything. The unifying nature of the ocean really allowed us to bond as a group even though at the time we were strangers. Being in this setting of Grand Isle is the perfect place to foster community: you have no distractions and nothing but beautiful scenery to look at. Swimming in the water alongside the group in the same place that Edna and Adelé once swam is mind-boggling. I can really understand the closeness that they felt on the beaches of Grand Isle together.

Walking back to the house after spending all day in the water on Grand Isle.

Later that day, we headed over to The Starfish Restaurant for a delicious Po-Boy dinner. Looking around at the various tables, I could really feel the strong community found in Grand Isle. Each waitress knew most customers on a first-name basis, groups of friends sat at their table for hours and hours just talking, and overall, just pure happiness. After that heavy meal, Chelsea, Emery, Alex and I wanted to take a nice stroll to burn off all that fried food. Trying to better understand the concept of Bookpacking, I followed Edna’s words on walking.

“I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much—-so many rare little glimpses of life”

— Kate Chopin

Not wanting to miss out on those little moments (especially given our limited time here) we embarked on our mini journey. Walking allowed us to see so many tiny details a car doesn’t show. We saw children’s shoes laying in the debris from the hurricane, the local school, and most importantly, the rooster beneath Joe-Bob’s. We were able to form a better understanding of what life is like on Grand Isle, walking in the footsteps of the people who call this place home. Making these little memories like Edna encouraged us to do allowed us to feel more a part of this quaint Grand Isle community.

Despite this community being struck by disaster on disaster on disaster, their hospitability and strength echoes throughout the island. As we drove to where the jetty once was, there were signs hanging from houses that said, “We Will Rebuild Grand Isle Together”. This really resonated with me, as much as this community has been torn down by Hurricane Ida, it continues to remain intact. The beauty and calmness that Grand Isle produces has drawn people here for well over 150 years, and I’m so glad to say that we were able to create our own community because of this place, despite many of us coming from different traditions and backgrounds. Even though Louisiana was built on many differing cultures, it was able to create this unique blend of many different backgrounds as our group has done. As we start to head into New Orleans, I am extremely to see this cultural blend and Southern hospitality in a city setting.

Despite many people having their homes destroyed like this one, the residents of Grand Isle are still able to maintain such a strong sense of community. This definitely was the perfect environment for us as a group to start bonding and getting closer.