Why Tulane?

““The place was too modest to attract the attention of people of fashion, and so quiet as to have escaped the notice of those in search of pleasure and dissipation… [Edna] often stopped there during her perambulations; sometimes taking a book with her, and sitting an hour or two under the trees when she found the place deserted.””
— Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"

Why Tulane? It sounds like a question one would find on their college application. However, this is the question I have been asking myself over the past week while our cohort has been bookpacking the Big Easy. I have spent countless hours of my stay here in New Orleans on Tulane’s campus - specifically in the air-conditioned, near-empty Tulane Newcomb Business School Complex - reading, blogging, and writing essays for class. The first few times I came to the business school I knew exactly why I was here: it was a quiet place to study and escape the relentless New Orleans humidity and heat, as well as a place that I remembered from my college admissions visits as quite a nice spot to lounge. However, walking along the naturally lit, silent halls and sitting in my plump, Mississippi-river water-green revolving chair for the fifth or sixth time just this week, I wonder what draws me to Tulane. I also contemplate what leads some authors - including some of the novelists whose works we have read while bookpacking - to incorporate Tulane University into their novels, either by recounting their characters’ experiences as students of this prominent New Orleans university or by making the campus a literary setting for events to unfold on or around.

The area in which I sat down to read, study, and decompress each day at Tulane, featuring the Mississippi-river water-green chair.

Part of the reason I personally keep coming back to and thinking about Tulane is that it has become my spot in New Orleans. Just as Edna’s spot in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” was a small, secluded coffee shop in the New Orleans suburbs - a spot she could go to read, relax, and decompress - my place is Tulane University’s Business School building. On the fourth floor of the building, it's so air-conditioned it almost feels as if I am back in the Bay Area hiking on a foggy morning, so silent that the drop of a pen could disturb the calm serenity of the place, and almost completely naturally lit by the magnificent skylights spanning from one side of the elongated building to the other. Sitting in my comfy chair with a book in hand, I understand how Edna feels when she rests below the canopy of tree branches shading her secluded cafe’s patio; in such a lively city that never sleeps like New Orleans, it feels great to have a calm, quiet, and most importantly personal place in which to decompress. 

The other reason for my return to Tulane is that the university holds a special place in my heart. Not only is Tulane one of only three universities I was seriously considering attending - and walking along the oak tree-lined pathways I can imagine a life in which I had indeed chosen to attend - but also I have visited the school on numerous occasions and now feel connected to both Tulane’s campus and the surrounding area. I have come to the university three times before for college campus visits at various stages of the college admissions and decision process. With each visit,  I have been able to explore and enjoy the campus, the adjacent Audobon Park, the many amazing restaurants nearby, and the streetcar system running along Saint Charles Avenue. Each visit and every new experience made has solidified the location as my favorite area in New Orleans, which is why I knew when coming back to the Crescent City for this Maymester that I had to revisit Tulane.

Shot of the Tulane Newcomb Business School at night.

I know why I love Tulane and have come to associate it with the New Orleans experience, but the question I have been asking myself is why Tulane is present in so many New Orleans novels. In John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces” both Ignatius and Myrna Minkoff are described as to have studied at Tulane - with Ignatius specifically earning a Master’s degree in Medieval studies from the university - and in Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” the protagonist, Jack “Binx” Bolling, and his friend Walter are said to be former students and fraternity brothers at Tulane. Additionally, Binx is shown in Percy’s novel returning to Tulane to watch a film at a local theater he once frequented and reminisce about his collegiate years.

Picture of John Kennedy Toole taken in 1961, two years after Toole graduated from Tulane.

I believe that the pervasive presence of Tulane in popular New Orleans novels is due to two factors. The first factor is that many prominent New Orleans writers local to the area - and specifically white authors since the university didn’t desegregate until the 1960s and even afterwards the university educated only a small percentage of Black New Orleans college students - attended Tulane themselves. After attending this prominent university, these alumni authors probably felt it only made sense that their New Orleanian characters attend the school they had come to not only love but to associate with New Orleans and the New Orleans collegiate experience. In other words, due to these authors’ own New Orleans collegiate experiences at Tulane, they likely felt when creating their characters that it was only fitting their New Orleanian characters attend, in their eyes, the one true New Orleans university. Another reason that these alumni novelists may have chosen to incorporate Tulane into their characters’ stories is that they may have been aiming to base their characters on themselves. In pursuit of this goal, it’s only natural that these authors’ characters would attend the same university as them and have a similar collegiate experience. One example of this is New Orleans author John Kennedy Toole, who both during and after his time as a Tulane student was known to be somewhat of an outsider, an intelligent yet strange person who had a hard time forming relationships with others. The protagonist of Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces”, Ignatius, holds many similarities to the creator he is partially based off of, being both a Tulane alumni and a misfit.

An image of Tulane students gathered in protest, from the 1970 student yearbook.

However, the more exciting reason that pushes authors to incorporate Tulane into their stories and characters is that Tulane has such deep academic roots in New Orleans - especially among the city’s white population - that it is virtually impossible to emit Tulane from New Orleans stories centered around New Orleanian characters. Founded in 1834 as a medical school to help counter epidemic smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera outbreaks, Tulane has since developed into an elite, private research university that is not only considered the premier university of New Orleans but of the greater Deep South. While Tulane has and continues to educate scholars from across the globe, it has always disproportionately serviced the Louisiana - and specifically New Orleans - community. Because of this, there is a long history of white New Orleans families sending their children to study at Tulane, just as the parents of the family once did. While Tulane has historically serviced generally wealthier, white New Orleanians - meaning the history of New Orleanians being educated at Tulane only applies to select groups in New Orleanian society - many New Orleans novels center around characters from this exclusive group. Some examples from our bookpacking books of New Orleans novels that center on this rich, white group include “The Moviegoer”, “The Awakening”, and “Interview With the Vampire”. So, when these numerous New Orleans novelists - who are writing books centered around wealthy, white New Orleanian characters - are deciding what educational background to endow upon their characters, it only makes sense for these characters - given the university’s long-held ties with the rich, white New Orleans community - to have attended Tulane. Tulane is linked to New Orleans’ wealthy, white community through decades of history of educating this select group, so to write a story centered around a New Orleans wealthy, white character is to inevitably write a story with ties to the Crescent City’s premier university.

For the umpteenth time, I exit the Tulane Newcomb Business building as the sun sets, the dimming light illuminating the oak trees with an orange hue. As I wait along Saint Charles Avenue for the streetcar to arrive, I gaze upon Tulane. Do I wish I had attended Tulane even now? No, I love USC and my (albeit short) experience as a student at the university has been truly amazing. However, the side of me that loves New Orleans, this fantastical and mysterious city, will always hold some longing for Tulane; this side of me knows the experience of being a student at the university would not only have allowed me to better understand the university and its historical importance but also better understand the city of New Orleans which has been so heavily influenced by its premier university. This thought wisps away with the arrival of the nearly empty streetcar. I step onboard and watch through the open streetcar window as Tulane fades in the distance, knowing I will be back the next day to go through the same serene routine.

A Little chaotic Update

The format for this blog is different from my others -- this is solely a recap on what I have been up to and a reflection of my time here. Some thoughts are longer than others, so bear with me... Well, what have I been up to?

A view of Audabon Park.

Recently, our group explored and had a seminar at Audabon Park. As I was walking, I couldn’t help but think “wow, this is the life.” We came across horses, a kid's birthday party, a group of middle-aged women dancing as they walked, a lovely river, and some very luxurious dogs (whose breeds I believe are a reflection of those who can afford to live there). It felt very picturesque.

 

I also went to the classic, famous Café Du Monde with Ciena. We went to the one at City Park, and while it was quite different from the Jackson Square location, I preferred it. I think my heart is most content in slower, more open spaces. The architecture was beautiful, there was a soprano saxophone making some music, and we simply sat, had some good conversation, then enjoyed our frozen coffees and beignets. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back!

 

Francesca and I at the Money Wasters!

Some members of the group and I went to another Second Line Parade — the Money Wasters. I felt like I owned my dancing more at this one, and there were moments that truly blew my mind. It was like a scene from a movie. I remember feeling pure excitement from the crowd, and I looked around me and saw people climbing up poles and dancing on balconies. The band was playing and singing proudly, and people all around them were moving with great energy. I saw my trombone crush performing (a trombonist who I have been seeing frequently around and mildly obsessing over their skill). Then there was a battle of the bands! Two bands had come together and were going back and forth with each other.

A few things ran through my mind: I can’t imagine growing up with this. There was a little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders, and this is probably a part of her weekly routine! Yet I don’t think Los Angeles, or anywhere for that matter, could have anything matched to New Orleans’ Second Line parades. We were joking that people in LA would just get their phones out and record the whole thing rather than dance along with the band. But I think this is what makes the parades so special and unique, and it’s what makes me want to come back.

 

And of course… ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW! I got close to three of my friends back home because of this movie. We would watch it every so often and become acquainted with the audience’s script, even using props like one is supposed to in the theater. But wow – seeing it live was incomparable. Our entire group went and dressed up in the theme. When we got there, it immediately felt like a welcoming and fun atmosphere. Seeing the performers who were around my age own their sexuality and confidence was incredibly empowering. I felt giddy the entire show. This was one of my most memorable moments from the Maymester.

I’ve been enjoying buying gifts for people back home. It feels special to think of what reminds me of someone and take back a part of the city to them. I can’t wait to get back to my family, friends, and pets, but I also don’t want to leave. I wish that I could bring others here to share it with me, except that I know what I have sincerely appreciated about this experience is increasing my confidence and learning that I can handle myself independently. Additionally, I feel so lucky when I remember the people I am with. I truly feel like my brain expands when we all have discussions. I can’t think of any other opportunity when I would have gotten to spend time with so many of these different people involved in other activities from me.

I’m really valuing the bookpacking aspect of the class. I love learning in general and really enjoy our morning seminars. I also feel like it’s powerful to be able to explore a place through literature. I wanted this course to make me fond of reading again, and I can thoroughly say it’s done that. I appreciate having a book in my hands because, while it can allow me to escape, it is also more inviting to others than me being on my phone. People may ask what I’m reading, and it can spark a conversation.

Finally, I talked about this in my last blog, but man, I love the people here! I just came back from a laundromat where I was chatting with the worker there, Georgia, for a long while. I realized that I haven’t ever small talked this much with so many different people. I understand how grand it is for some to live in LA, and my mom even left a similar town to Louisiana in upstate New York to move to Southern California, but I question how one could ever leave a town like this where there is such a strong community. There is an infectious warmth, and I really find myself feeling excited, smiley, and eager to talk to others because of how people have been treating me. There’s so much to get to know about everyone!

That was a fun and perhaps chaotic mix of thoughts, but I appreciate you sticking with me. I feel at the perfect point where, with the end in sight, I am taking in every moment of my time here. If I’m parting with you, I’ll miss you! If I’m coming back to you, see you soon!

Bipolar Characters, Bipolar City

“I wait gloomily. Long ago I leared to be wary of Kate’s revelations. These exalted moments, when she is absolutely certain what course to take for the rest of her life, are often followed by spells of the blackest depression.”
— Jack "Binx" Bolling, "The Moviegoer"

A room in the New Orleans Presbytére Museum’s Mardi Gras exhibit featuring costumes from past Mardi Gras celebrations that Krewe members wore.

The museum was the epitome of duality. On the top floor of the New Orleans Presbytére Museum was the Mardi Gras exhibit. The floor held bright colors, light New Orleans jazz music playing in the background, and a playful atmosphere that was reinforced by the fun, light-hearted material being presented on this festive celebration. Going through this exhibit, I felt myself smiling, imagining what it would be like to attend one of these fantastical parades. However, the downstairs section of the museum was a wholly different experience. This floor featured the Hurricane Katrina exhibit, a bleak and sobering display that called viewers to step into the shoes of New Orleanians who lived through this horrific natural disaster. Placards speaking on the death count, the governmental failure to coordinate and rescue those trapped in the storm, the progression of flooding that occurred as the levees broke, and the personal experiences of those stuck in the city, all contributed to a dark and depressing atmosphere. While the sudden transition in the museum from a lighthearted, playful Mardi Gras atmosphere to a dark, grim Hurrican Katrina ambiance was a shock to the system, it was helpful in that it got me thinking about duality. I started contemplating the duality not only present in New Orleans but also in the literary characters we were reading about in our bookpacking novels.

A display in the Presbytére’s Katrina exhibit.

There is a duality present in various characters we have read about in our bookpacking books. The first example is Buddy Bolden from Michael Ondaatje’s “Coming Through Slaughter”, who is a lively, highly sociable person who has everyone around him gravitating towards him in social settings, but at times he falls prey to jealousy, sadness, and even insanity. Another great example is Jack “Binx” Bolling from Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer”, a man that constantly contemplates lofty philosophical questions regarding spirituality, gender relations, and personal values, but leads a rather dull, unimaginative life as a stockbroker. However, the greatest duality present in certain characters in our books, and a duality that I have come to be highly fascinated by, is in fact psychological. There are two characters we have read about who have severe bipolar disorder, a condition defined by psychological duality.

In a psychological sense, bipolar disorder is fundamentally the duality of emotional states. Bipolar disorder is a mental disorder in which those afflicted swing between periods of manic, uncontrollable happiness, excitement, and high motivation, and periods of crippling depression, hopelessness, and a lack of motivation to live life. Fundamentally, those affected by bipolar disorder make massive leaps on a frequent basis from one end of the spectrum of emotions to the other, a jump that is often jarring and can have significant negative consequences for affected individuals.

Two characters from our bookpacking novels experience typical signs of bipolar disorder - though before continuing on I will say that these characters are never labeled by the book as having bipolar disorder so my diagnosis is based solely off contextual literary evidence. These bipolar characters are Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” and Kate Cutrer of “The Moviegoer”. 

Examining these two bipolar characters, they both act in eerily similar ways that would suggest they both suffer from serious bipolar disorder. In Edna’s case, she is shown to swing between moments of immense happiness, motivation, and inspiration, and moments where she is depressed and doesn’t feel like doing anything, feeling like life is pointless. The best example of this is Edna’s behavior when in “The Awakening” she returns to New Orleans (for a summary of “The Awakening” refer to my first blog post). At times, Edna has high motivation and excitement to do anything and everything she wants to do, such as buying a new house - which she dubs the “Pidgeon house” - or working on the art she is so passionate about. At other times, Edna falls into a deep depression, longing endlessly to be reunited with her love, Robert Lebrun, and despising her life to the point that she ends up killing herself by drowning. Another aspect of Bipolar disorder is that when bipolar individuals are in states of depression they are more likely to make poor decisions, and Edna’s extramarital affairs with both Robert and Alcée Arobin could be seen as poor choices she wouldn’t have made in a more mentally healthy state. 

Looking at Kate Cutrer from “The Moviegoer”, just like Edna, Kate swings between manic episodes of extreme happiness and excitement and moments of deep depression in which her family has to care for her to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. For those not familiar with the book, “The Moviegoer” is a story that follows the life of Jack “Binx” Bolling, a New Orleans stockbroker and Korean War veteran. What makes this book so interesting is Binx himself, as while he is a self-perceived enlightened thinker who often ponders upon a range of philosophical topics, his real life is much tamer and unimaginative, with him being simply a businessman who enjoys two things: makjing money and going on dates with girls, such as Kate. Kate is shown in the book experiencing moments of ecstasy and excitement where she feels like she has figured out her life and her purpose, quickly running to Binx - the person she feels most comfortable with -  during these times and telling him of her revelations, as well as how she is going to profoundly change her life to follow her new goals. On the other hand, Kate goes through moments of deep depression and where she holds low motivation to live. During these times, she refuses to attend important events, disappears without telling anyone, and even at one point attempts suicide. Even though in the book it is stated Kate is working with a therapist and taking medication, considering the story takes place in the mid-20th century when there wasn’t much awareness of bipolar disorder, it is unlikely she was receiving the proper care necessary to deal with her overwhelming condition.

Tesla and Twitter President Elon Musk. Musk and his large following is a real-life case study on how audiences can find bipolar individuals and their actions enticing and riveting.

Now the question is, why do these two prominent New Orleanian books both feature bipolar characters? The first and more obvious answer to this is that bipolar characters are enticing characters to follow and ones that readers are drawn to pay attention to. Bipolar characters are often depicted acting sporadically and haphazardly in a way that is highly intriguing and creates exciting literary situations. Even outside of literature, it can be seen that people are drawn to bipolar individuals. Take, for example, Tesla founder Elon Musk. Must not only holds a large audience of followers who are addicted to him and everything he does and says, but he has also captivated the news media, which now constantly discusses him and his actions. This captivation with Musk is due to the eccentric, ridiculous things he says and does, outlandish actions that are likely undertaken during manic episodes Musk experiences as a bipolar individual. Simply put, bipolar characters are captivating to audiences, and authors are quick to include them in their stories in order to draw readers in.

However, the less obvious reason for the inclusion of bipolar characters in New Orleanian stories is that the psychological duality of the characters reflects the duality of the city in which these stories are set. New Orleans is a city defined by duality. There is much suffering that this city has experienced, but there is also much hope, happiness, and fun that the city partakes in. Thinking back to my experience at the Presbytére Museum, on the one hand, New Orleans has to constantly face devastating natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina that frequently bash the Gulf Coast, but on the other hand, the Crescent City holds fun-filled, cheery festivities such as Mardi Gras and second lines. The city has dealt with the horrors of slavery, racism, racially-motivated police violence, and discrimination, but it also partakes in amazing jazz performances, comedy shows and plays along Canal Street, and even drunken celebrations on Bourbon Street. The Big Easy holds such a duality in that it goes through immense moments of pain and hardship that are juxtaposed with moments of joy and excitement. Given the duality of New Orleans, bipolar characters - who hold psychological duality - in New Orleanian stories don’t feel out of place but rather inextricably linked to the setting in which their story takes place. Bipolar characters are fitting additions to New Orleanian stories, which explains why both “The Awakening” and “The Moviegoer” feature a bipolar character.

While these contemplations on the duality of New Orleans and the literary characters we are reading about started in the Presbytére Museum, these thoughts have continued to jostle around in my brain as my New Orleans journey has gone on. These ideas came up when I went to see a live recording of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me at the Saenger Theater on Canal Street. During the show, I sat among a crowd of laughing, joyful audience members, but then, after leaving the theater, I walked along streets lined with beleaguered homeless people settling down for the night. These thoughts also came up when strolling through the picturesque French Quarter, with streets lined with smiling tourists and locals alike, and then making my way into the Treme to view houses still yet to be fully repaired after the damage that Hurrican Ida inflicted. These contemplations came up looking at Google Maps in our seminar, noticing how both the Garden District and the Lower Ninth Ward seemed from the Satellite View to have an abundance of green vegetation incorporated into their suburban neighborhoods; then realizing that with the former area, the heightened presence of vegetation was due to an abundance of money to fund elaborate landscaping, and with the latter sector of the city, vegetation had overgrown the abandoned houses that had been destroyed and flooded in Hurricane Katrina. The setting that a book is written and takes place in certainly affects the story. What I have found while bookpacking and contemplating is that the duality of New Orleans has heavily affected the New Orleanian books we are reading to the point where if these stories were to take place in any other city, the narrative and its characters would feel totally and completely out of place.

New Orleans’ Genie-Soul

At the start of our Maymester, Andrew explained to our group that we would find many different people here in New Orleans: Creole, Cajun, African American, White Protestant, you name it. He also told us that what we may find could be quite different from our expectations. With the political turmoil in America during the last few years, it is easy to form strong opinions about individuals without even meeting them, which I am admittedly guilty of. But I have learned that the only way we can close this political gap is through genuine kindness – fostering a welcoming environment by treating each other as people first. The Southern hospitality that I've experienced here in New Orleans has been like no other. One may discard these friendly gestures in the name of politics, but wouldn't that be incredibly destructive? In the novel The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, the main character Binx shares that he has experienced this behavior frequently in the South.

“If I had to name a single trait that all these people shared, it is their niceness. Their lives are triumphs of niceness. They like everyone with the warmest and most generous feelings.”
— Walker Percy

I have felt a warmth here like no other. The best way to describe this is that every interaction feels personal, even with the usual worker-customer relationship. Below are just a few examples of some of the interactions I’ve had.

The owner of Jeaux’s Coffee who gave us beignets!

  • We were given on-the-house beignets after chatting with the shop’s owner. In the same shop, I was given Mardi Gras coins from a local. 

  • A laundromat owner invited our group to his barbeque for this upcoming Sunday parade.

  • When I ordered a breakfast burrito at a coffee shop, the store was out of their salsa. This prompted a worker to go into the back and give me his personal salsa that he brings for himself. He told me it was the best he’s ever had, and I couldn’t agree more!

Every individual comes off as if they have all the time in the world when talking to you because they really care about your personal well-being. I think this is beautiful. I found myself slowing down, trying to learn people’s names and stories, and making a conscious effort to pass on the kindness.

I believe that in a world where the media only portrays the negative, it makes the good things seem so, so small. But this is why we need to cling to these moments, that we value life’s simple beauty. As Binx says…

“It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.”
— Walker Percy

People work incredibly hard to strive for some great happiness and relaxation, most often labeled retirement, yet this fosters an “if… then…” mentality, where if I do x,y, and z, then I will be happy. However, when I recall the lovely people that I have encountered, it prompts me to think that not acknowledging these special interactions along the way and rushing to the finish line would mean that one could fail to take in New Orleans’ genie-soul. 

“[Genie-soul is] the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else it is not a place.”
— Walker Percy

I believe that if you removed every individual from New Orleans and left it desolate, its genie-soul would not be inexistent but utterly different. It would be dark and empty. When you add the people, it gives this city life. A cup of gumbo would not be so delicious without the cook making it with love. A haunted building would not be known to be haunted without people reviving stories of its supernatural. The hotel we are staying in would simply be some beds in rooms without Kevin warmly greeting me every time I walk out, pausing to ask what I have planned for the day, wishing me well, and causing me to say “I’m going back home,” instead of “I’m going back to the hotel.”

Each interaction I have had here crafts the genie-soul of New Orleans as I see it in my mind. I don’t want to miss out on this simply because I am rushing from place to place.

The Rhythmic Breakdown

Paintings line the walls of Preservation Hall as a group of attendees patiently await the starts of the concert. Portraits of “The Greats,” fill the walls of Preservation Hall, illustrating the deep history that is here.

The sound of jazz is a euphoric experience. The sound simply numbs your body to outside forces and places it in a trance-like state where the instruments are in control of every single nerve. The piano taking hold of your legs, the saxophone taking over your arms, the drums swaying your hips from side to side, the trombone shaking your core with every glissando, suddenly your whole body is overtaken note by note and suddenly you are in a whole other world just like Buddy Bolden in Coming Through Slaughter. 

In Coming Through Slaughter, the entire book is a work of literary greatness. Each page is unlike the other; some are short, some are long, some are offcentered, some are flushed, some sprinkle in the work of prose which Michael Ondaatje, the books author, is best known for. There is no proper sequence for this book, it broke all of the rules that a book could, which is exactly why it perfectly describes the life of Buddy Bolden. Bolden was a black man living in the 19th century who was known as one of the “founders,” of jazz although he did not take credit for it. Yet, what he is most known for is his mental state. Bolden was known to have an increasingly worse mental state throughout his life that was filled with breakdowns, a broken family, and frequent escapades. His life was anything but normal and he definitely defied every rule in the book. 

The book is written as if it is a piece of sheet music, a piece of jazz. Each page drives you to the next but is broken into different snippets of Bolden’s life, just like the change from one instrument to another at Preservation Hall. The writing on each page did not only mirror the lyrical rhythm of jazz, but the jazz began to illustrate the shortcomings of Bolden’s mental state. It was then in this book's timeline in which I felt connected with the character more than anyone else in this place and time. 

Drifting back to about five years ago, it was evident that I was developing anxiety. I spent years in therapy detailing my past traumas and having various psychologists blame the most important people in my life for my unhappiness. This repeated message made me dwell on the past, playing what should have been long forgotten situations over and over again pushing me deeper into a psychological plunge. It was not until recently in which I have realized that my mental spats are no one’s fault. I was tired of dwelling on the past and was keen on focusing on the future and fixing my current state despite the millions of reasons that may have caused it. 

A member of Southern University band plays trombone alongside a band of about eight others. This group played for over an hour in the scorching heat right outside Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

The past years and leading into the present have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs that mirror the rhythmic changes from one note to the next that jazz so beautifully illustrates. When I stood in that jazz hall listening to the humming of the instruments, it was so clear that these melodic sounds were telling a story. Since the human mind is innately selfish, I truly believe that it was telling my story. From the very beginning the music was uplifting and filled with excitement and joy. I reflected upon these poetic sounds as a transport to my past. The days of my childhood that were filled with love and frolicking with not a care in the world. The days in which mental illness was a far distant idea that was too foreign to overtake my mind. 

As the vibration of the air continued the tones began to change. There was now a series of ups and downs. At one point there was just the sound of the tapping of keys on a worn down piano. It provided stability and a sense of belonging, a blanket of security. A time that I saw as my period of finding out about my mental illness. Being slowly introduced to this idea that my mind was not completely controlled by me. It was instead to be overtaken by this monster that rocked my core. It placed me in a chokehold and slammed me against the wall with no place to run, no place to hide, no retreat in sight. I was weak, I was stuck and the future was unknown and frightening. Would I stay in this chokehold forever? Or, would I one day be able to break out and exert my own sense of power?

Slowly the sounds shifted into the saxophone which provided a sense of fear. My whole body was shaking, wrestling with its thoughts. Trying to grasp onto anything I could to possibly relieve my pain and allow me to escape from the wall. But the feelings continued to electrify. My palms were sweating, my voice becoming hoarse, my body in a state of panic. There was no option of fight or flight at this point. I could not run away, I could not hide, It was going to be fight. It would soon always be fight. 

The trombonist sits in Preservation Hall greasing his slide. It is essential for the trombonist to take care of his instrument beforehand in order to have control and ease when they are playing.

Then the trombone came, it sounded even more riveting. The strong tones shook my core, sending me into a frenzy. It was happening there was no turning back. The trombonist stood up, and I winced; knowing very well what was coming next. It was inevitable. The trombone powered into the sound of the glissando. There it was. The feeling of death. The feeling of dying. The feeling that took me time and time again, week after week, year after year. The feeling that kept me a prisoner from sleep, a prisoner from friends. The feeling that held me captive in the attic, hot and steaming with no room to breathe. The feeling that took me to the hospital time and time again because I would become so ill there was no other place that seemed right. Begging for them to tell me what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I eat? Why couldn’t I breathe? Why couldn’t I live?

The glissando neared the end and the seven-letter word that would be a part of my life forever was once again diagnosed to me. Anxiety. 

I live in an age where we are spreading awareness of mental illness. Where I am seen as a person with a disability, exaggerating that I am a person first and I just happen to be living with a mental illness. Although sometimes this feeling is encompassing, it does feel that I am defined by my body’s inability to shut down negative thoughts and an inability to control the racing feeling of my heart. Yet, I’m reminded by my peers, my friends, my family, my loving boyfriend that I am not a product of anxiety. I am a fighter of anxiety and that is what allows me to slip through the chokehold and away from the wall. 

But Buddy Bolden was never able to slip away from the wall. He was mentally disturbed first and a man second. He was never given the opportunity to break away from the wall. His life would always be a song of jazz, the bounce of the saxophone carrying him to fear, and the glissando crashing down his world like a fighter jet each and every time. He was never able to make it to the piano, the stability, because no one had told him that that was an option. Instead he stayed against the wall, in a chokehold for the rest of his life. His behavior was deemed uncontrollable, unfixable, and so he found himself locked in a concrete room of Jackson, Louisiana in a hall filled not with people but with mental disabilities. He stayed in this suffocating room until the day his body gave out, never once released from his chokehold until the day he found himself looking inside his own coffin in which the song grew to an end and the room filled with the clapping of the opulent fair skinned community that overtook the room.






Main Character Syndrome

“Main Character Syndrome: When someone thinks they are the main character of their life. Usually comes with a side of individuality complex, quirky style and a self-centered point of view” (Urban Dictionary, 2023).

Edna was a respectable Catholic housewife and mother, a Creole woman in high society in late-1800s New Orleans, and she was in love with and had secret desires for a man who wasn't her husband. She also wasn't crazy about her children. But she kept it all a secret, away from judging eyes. Her tortured journey of confusion and repression of her sexuality and her true feelings to awakening is one that almost every female reader can identify with, but it's also one that was historically denied to women, denied to Edna. It's an epiphany that awakens her desire and her right as a woman to be the main character of her own story, and it's a powerful epiphany, that Kate Chopin encaptures, that is a rite of passage for the oppressed.

Identifying as Korean American, it should be relatively easy to find your identity, to find “yourself” and the boxes you fit into. Especially when considering the friends I’d made and the people I’d met in Southern California, especially when considering my sophomore year suitemate Kara who had a white dad and a Chinese mom, especially considering the middle ground she balanced, not knowing whether she was white or Asian, considering all of that I should have had it relatively easy with two Asian parents. Despite coming from Hawaii, a state where everyone was or at least knew someone who was Asian, where everyone had an intimate understanding of the vast diaspora that constituted “Asia,” Kara often didn’t know where or how she fit into the two opposing genes she was born with. Considering my friends who, like Kara, didn’t know what they belonged to, I was born with only one possibility, with one straightforward path to follow.

Lane Kim from the television show Gilmore Girls being a good Asian girl to being the baddest of them all

And for a while, while growing up in mainly majority-white schools, in majority white neighborhoods, in majority white social circles, I believed and, almost as if naturally, took upon the role of the activist and was looked upon as the spokesperson of the entire Asian American community to efficiently package an entire population’s struggles and desires for the convenience of a certain class of people who couldn’t be bothered and moreover, weren’t incentivized to listen.

Obviously, being the minority in any sense, not belonging to the conventional, intrinsically places you on the sidelines and makes you second choice. Rejected by potential friends, rejected by potential mentors who would rather guide students who look like them, rejected by the boys you bravely give your heart to, it’s not only being told that you’re not the “main character,” but also being told that you can never be, forever cursed to the sidelines, to serve, to provide fluff, to move the plot – all because you were born with the wrong features, the wrong body type, the wrong hair, the wrong color.

Today, it’s not that dramatic. The above description is more of an in-depth version that seems more damning, self-pitying and foreboding than today’s reality, or at least, than my own reality. But the sharp prick of realization that comes with each racially-motivated rejection isn’t any less painful, because each realization comes with the force of having to come face to face with the accusation of simply not being enough. And growing up, being seen and defined as an undesired minority almost inevitably leads to a sorrowful and painful resentment of your own enriching background, of all the things that make someone uniquely special. No matter how many coming-of-age films or throwback 2000s movies or romantic comedies try to convey the message that weirdness is attractive, desirable, hot and manic pixie, it is still delivered in the medium of a conventionally attractive, white woman.

Miss Saigon, his “lotus blossom”

It’s crucial to admit the certain privilege “awarded” to Asian Americans, especially East Asian Americans, not only because of our lighter skin but also because of our representation as the model minority – quiet, hardworking, obedient and consequently, easily controllable. But what most of our older Asian parents and relatives who revel in this “privilege” fail to realize is that in their pride is the acceptance of white supremacist views, the willingness to be blind to the injustices committed against us, to support and progress the oppression of fellow minorities, to fulfill that secondary character role that never initiates but follows. It is weaponized against us to place us in stagnation, to define us as the Lane Kim to Rory Gilmore, the Mr. Yunioshi to Holly Golightly and the Kim to the Engineer and nothing more.

Moving to Southern California, especially to Los Angeles, where over 10% of the population was Asian, South LA seemed to be a utopia where the people who looked like me made up the majority and the food and media I grew up consuming dominated social and academic conversations. It was a place where Asian families had settled for generations, where my peers were fourth and fifth-generation, from an established legacy that I didn’t know was possible for our community. They were children who had forgotten their mother tongue and children who had the audacity and confidence of the white people I grew up with, because now, they were the majority. They were what my parents would have considered completely “American.”

Rachel Chu and Nick Young, Crazy Rich Asians

In these newly, completely foreign settings, in the Korean cultural clubs and even in my different classes, in my various Asian social circles, where I was part of a desired majority, I had finally found the space where I felt confident and attractive, where I could fully explore what my interests and passions lied and what my desires and fears were, just simply as a teenage girl, completely unburdened by the weight of her racial and cultural identity. But even in these environments where, on paper, I should’ve felt entirely unrestrained in, I couldn’t help but notice the differences and discrepancies in the thought processes and emotional reactions I had compared to my Asian friends who were native to Los Angeles and San Francisco. These discrepancies are what I still continue to explore, wondering if they’re the result of the differences between a first-generation and fourth-generation Korean American, or if they’re diasporic differences, or if they’re simply regional differences. But along this exploration, is the discovery of myself as a person who wasn’t placed with the responsibility of an entire community, but instead, a person who had the right and the duty of being the main character of my own story.

But sitting on the sand of Grand Isle where Edna dared to love someone she couldn’t, where she went through all the tumultuous motions of a budding, forbidden and secret romance, through an experience that strips raw and bare mothers, wives and naive young girls alike, I had inhabited Edna, and even better yet, had felt as if I had become the main character. Walking along the path where the water broke the sand, against the wind that filled all of the senses, I was reminded of the times when I, like Edna, was overcome with an all-consuming love, with the emotions and desires she herself couldn’t identify. With a story, with a character that so deeply experienced feelings and thoughts that are both so universal yet deeply personal, I had felt the emotions I experienced every time I loved so deeply, so hopelessly, being represented through Edna, united through 100 years by the innately human and feminine capability to love. Edna represented, for me, all of the trials and tribulations of simply being a young woman, unbridled by the considerations of race and socioeconomics.

Edna in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

Although identity plays an undeniable role in someone’s story and in the development of someone’s personal thoughts and emotions, growing up carrying out the role of representing your identity, growing up where all the facets of your life are defined as simply “Asian,” I wanted less, I craved seeing my people simply happy. The portrayals of my identity in media have largely been heavy and serious, depriving the people who looked like me of all the visceral joys and fears of life, all the deeply visceral human emotions that are usually portrayed in the bodies of white actors and artists and subsequently, seem reserved for those bodies.

Not knowing, I was subconsciously tired of bodies and faces like mine being solely reserved to represent our plight of misrepresentation, to represent the burden of fighting for racial equality, obediently following the model minority myth, when I had been yearning to see my people, girls who looked like me full of the virality, silliness, depth of emotion and life like I knew my friends and mother to be, like I knew I was. I wanted the Ingrid Yun’s, the Lara Jean’s, the Kitty’s, the Rachel Chu’s and Nick Young’s. And reading atop of that wooden balcony, under the same beating sun, at that same magical period of dusk, swimming against the same waves, felt as though I were reaching Edna, as if the cameras and writers had turned their attention on me, validating my own story and feelings, in just the same way as Kate Chopin did for Edna.

Waking the Dead

A tarot card reader sits under a green umbrella in front of St. Louis Cathedral.

What makes New Orleans the perfect city for a vampire novel?

This was the question that guided our class discussions of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and steered my explorations of the city’s murkier side—and I'm not talking about the Mississippi River. But this question also intrigues me for a more personal reason, as it relates to my own novel-in-progress.

I have had the pleasure of experiencing the immersion of Bookpacking triple fold; not only do I get to delve into New Orleans literature while retracing the steps of its authors and characters, I also have the opportunity to conduct research for my own writing. My novel takes place in the underbelly of New Orleans subculture—which includes, to no one’s surprise, vampires. This course has been the perfect chance to familiarize myself with my setting, to gain cultural literacy and know my references (IWTV is, without a doubt, mandatory reading for any aspiring vamp), and conduct on-the-ground research to answer that essential question. Though my novel is in its early stages yet, I hope to one day contribute my own writing to the canon of New Orleans vampire literature.

A goth-themed shotgun house in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Traces of subculture are visible everywhere across the city.

There are many ways to answer this question; in fact, during our seminar, we wrote a list, and could have kept brainstorming if it weren’t for the constraints of time. New Orleans is a nocturnal city, with a culture of embracing and celebrating difference that has led to a proliferation of subculture. It’s a city full of opulence, of indulgence in food and drink and sex and celebration. It is a deeply superstitious place with no shortage of spirituality; tarot readers sit at card tables before the St. Louis Cathedral, a visual encapsulation of New Orleans’ unique blend of Catholic and Voodoo roots. This amalgamation of religion has created an observably unique culture surrounding death.

One cannot pass through New Orleans without noticing the cemeteries. They are landmarks in and of themselves, walled-off plots with rows upon rows of raised tombs and family crypts, like a gated community of the dead. It is no wonder Lestat sneaks off to sleep amongst these tombs; as one walks through the cemetery, eye-level with caskets sealed off from the world of the living, it is easy to imagine the grinding noise of stone on stone as a vampire emerges from a crypt. This unique style of above-ground burial is practical in origin: New Orleans’ high water table and propensity for floods makes resting six-feet-under difficult. When it floods, buried caskets rattle and bang around in their waterlogged graves. This effect is too eerie even for New Orleans. One does not have to think too hard to imagine why superstitions of vampires and the undead would catch in such conditions.

The Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District of New Orleans.

Cemetery in Houma, LA.

Ciena stands in front of an above-ground grave in Grand Isle, LA.

Funeral culture in New Orleans can also be community oriented. According to our ghost tour guide YhhYhh Universe (a self-identified “black cat” secret society member who meowed, often), some bodies are interred in public graves made of clay and later removed after a year and a day, when the heat of the Louisiana swamp has turned the tomb into an oven and the bodies have been naturally cremated. Other tombs are owned by Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, membership-based organizations dedicated to mutual aid within Black communities. These clubs ensure that, at the ends of their lives, all of their members can be laid to rest with dignity, regardless of their means. And, of course, the famous New Orleans jazz funeral features a somber processional to the gravesite, and an upbeat celebration of life on the way out. At the Backstreet Cultural Museum, we learned about these Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, jazz funerals, and more; one display featured a photo of Lionel Batiste, the late jazz drummer, preserved and posed in a lifelike standing position at his own funeral.

Lionel Batiste, displayed in a standing position at his funeral wake.

The idea of a standing corpse may feel gauche or grotesque, but the practice of any sort of open-casket embalming is a relatively new phenomenon, tied to an evolution in Christian funeral culture and the for-profit funeral industry. The preservation of corpses feels as old as the ancient Egyptians, but embalming as we know it today is a modern invention, requiring the use of harsh chemicals that are both dangerous to the embalmers and to the environment, as they seep into the soil and groundwater after bodies are buried. There exists a culturally engrained idea that decay is somehow wrong, a corruption of the body that is inherently harmful to the living; that the living should be able to view the dead, perfectly preserved and standing as if in life, creates cognitive dissonance that obscures the painful but necessary reality of death. The funeral industry profits from the desire to stave off decay at all costs through the sale of expensive pressure-sealed caskets, designed to keep the elements out and provide the illusion that a family’s loved one is resting peacefully, preserved for all eternity. In reality, by preventing the emission of gas as a part of natural decay, these caskets, combined with embalming chemicals, can cause bodies to literally explode in their graves. These practices are the industry standard, but New Orleans’ above-ground cemeteries remind us that there are burial practices and traditions other than the American Christian model of embalming and open-casket wakes.

There was once a time when the lack of decay was considered more frightening, disgusting, and unnatural; as such, decay plays a clear role in early vampire mythology. In the vampire classic Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, villagers fearing the presence of a predatory vampire exhume the graves of their suspects to check for signs of decay; finding Carmilla’s body perfectly preserved, as if blood still flows through her veins, they stake her heart and kill the vampire. Even IWTV contains indications that open-casket embalming was not always the norm; Lestat tells Louis that they can travel across oceans by shipping their coffins under the guise of transporting the dead bodies of loved ones, taking advantage of the sailors’ reticence to view human remains. The Civil War marked a turning point, as sending the bodies of soldiers home to their families popularized embalming and changed the preservation of corpses from a sign of supernatural interference to a common practice.

It's no wonder that New Orleans’ unique culture surrounding death has created myths and legends of vampires roaming the streets, a wealth of vampire fiction, and a highly commercial vampire-themed tourist industry throughout the French Quarter. I could not skip a visit to the Boutique du Vampyre, the famous shop of occult wares and vampire paraphernalia, where a “fangsmith” can sculpt personalized fangs with the precision of a dentist. At the Vampire Café next door, I sipped on a red cocktail served in a blood bag, and on our ghost tour we passed a filming location from the 1994 film adaptation of IWTV. The list of spooky haunts and vampire-themed attractions goes on—but for my purposes, I wasn’t just interested in fictional vampires like Lestat, or tourist traps peddling the city’s vampire mythology. I was searching for the “real vampire” community of New Orleans.

Ciena stands in front of the Boutique du Vampyre.

Ciena sips from a blood bag at the Vampire Cafe with a copy of Interview With The Vampire on hand.

A group of people who spiritually identify as vampires trapped in human vessels, the “real vampire” community commits to the vampire lifestyle full-time. Many adopt nocturnal sleeping patterns, leaving the house only at night, use cosmetic veneers or file their teeth to get permanent fangs, and practice consensual blood drinking. This community used to be a thriving subculture in the 1990s and early 2000s, coinciding with the popularity of the goth scene. For the same reasons IWTV could only work in this city, self-identified “real vampires” in search of community flocked to New Orleans.

This group is the subject of my writing. I am captivated by the question—what kind of person does it take to not just read about vampires, to not just dress like one, but to become one? For my research, I started by asking around at all the vampire tourist spots. When I asked the cashier at the Boutique du Vampyre or the server at the Vampire Café if they had ever encountered the “real vampire” community, I was met with wariness. They were all willing to talk to me, but did not seem to want to go into detail, and were most reluctant of all to point me in the right direction to learn more, claiming ignorance. Everyone I spoke to had met a self-identified vampire—but most described negative experiences, citing everything from creepy behavior, intracommunity power dynamics, borderline sexual harassment, and even complicated webs of secret societies and occult groups that don’t get along with vampires due to some unspecified drama.

The closest lead I could obtain through my amateur investigative journalism was an invitation to a vampire speakeasy. A small card with an address and the passphrase “the vampire sent me,” the invitation sent us to a jazz bar on Bourbon Street, bumping with live music and plenty of non-vampy tourists. We wound our way to the back of the bar, past the jazz band and the bathrooms, to a quiet courtyard behind the kitchens. There were only two people out back, a guy smoking a cig and checking his phone, and a lone figure slouching at a patio table. Neither man acknowledged us. But the man at the table had long black hair and white contact lenses, so he seemed like a safe bet. Once I gave him the password and our invitation, he stood up, gave a gravelly “follow me,” and unlocked a nondescript door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. Then he led us up the wooden staircase and into the speakeasy. The second floor of the French Quarter townhouse had been transformed into an opulent bar, textured with velvet chairs, fancy rugs, and cobwebs. The gimmick of it all made me absolutely giddy.

Francesca and I prepare to attend the vampire speakeasy, dressed in our gothic best.

Inside the vampire speakeasy.

The bouncer, we later learned, had permanent fangs, and though he was not a self-identified vampire himself, his partner was. When I tried to pry for more information, he shrugged, and said, “if you know, you know,” a common refrain when I’ve dug too deep. It could be subculture gatekeeping, or it could be a script whose answering password I did not know. On the other hand, our server at the bar quickly identified us as the youngest, gothest patrons and was more than happy to chat with us.

She explained that the surface-level vampire tourist traps—the Boutique, Café, the speakeasy itself—are all owned by the same intimidating lady. They shuffle tourists like myself between these commercial locations. This was evident in the other clientele at the speakeasy; sadly more tourists and fewer goths than I had hoped. Sometimes, our server said, “real vampires” did come to the speakeasy to suss out potential inductees, to sort through the sightseers and identify the people who were actually serious about joining the vampire lifestyle, but there was no guarantee of ever meeting a “real vampire” at a tourist joint. The community generally keeps to itself. They especially don’t care for tourists who just want to gawk at them—which makes sense, but is sad for me, as I very much wanted to gawk at them.

Logo for the New Orleans Vampire Association (NOVA). Their website appears to be inactive since 2013, but its mission statement, as well as the events on their community forum, indicate a focus on charity and giving back to those in need as a way to thank the city of New Orleans for enabling their community to thrive.

The “real vampires”’ avoidance of tourists stems from more than just disdain; they don’t mess with us because they want to be left to their own devices, continuing to practice a vampire lifestyle consensually and with a standard of ethics. The “real vampire” community overlaps with BDSM subculture, sharing an emphasis on consent and contracts. Sanguinarians (blood-drinking “real vampires”) make formal agreements with willing donors, who are often but not always romantic or sexual partners, and use sterilized instruments to prick the skin for small amounts of blood. When put that way, one can still find this practice icky or weird, but it’s not nearly as depraved as it first sounds. Furthermore, “real vampire” organizations operate primarily as social clubs but also as charities. The New Orleans Vampire Association, for example, organized relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina and prepared meals for the homeless. The “real vampire” community expresses a desire to give back to New Orleans, the city which has provided them a second home, through that special culture of embracing difference which is fundamental to their existence as a community. At the end of the day, it’s highly unlikely that the “real vampires” of New Orleans are secretly evil murderers; they’re simply eccentrics, grateful to the city and glad to be left alone.

An adorable bat plushie for sale at the Boutique du Vampyre—and it can be yours for the low, perfectly reasonable price of $50!

That said, I hesitate to delve much deeper into the world of the “real vampires.” It’s a dying subculture; according to the speakeasy bouncer’s estimate, there are only about 50 vampires left in New Orleans. That is too few for me to continue to comfortably poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong. I don’t want some guy who’s convinced he’s the reincarnation of Lestat to know my face and learn my name. I just touched the surface of this world, and I have many questions left. Why is it dying? Is it the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused irreparable damage to many communities around the world? Is it the economic strain post-Katrina? Is it due to the decline of subculture, especially music-based subcultures, with the accessibility and homogenization of global culture in the Internet age? I think it might be because of the over-commercialization of the vampire world (based on the speakeasy patrons we saw, it’s slim pickings for new vampire recruits). Or is the answer something deeper—a shift in New Orleans’ culture around death? Supposedly even Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs like the Divine Ladies are no longer fulfilling their duties to maintain the graves of late members. Perhaps death, too, has been commercialized, the egoic desire to stop decay from inevitably taking hold of our bodies altering New Orleans’ community-oriented view on death forever.

I didn’t go deep enough to find out the answer for certain. But by conducting my own research, I had a richer Bookpacking experience than I could have ever hoped for. No matter what’s real—and no matter why it came about—what is undeniably true is that the “real vampire” community and its reputation has worked its way into the city’s psyche, to which superstition and spirituality is intrinsic. Even our hotel doorman, Todd, has seen them. He told us so, matter-of-fact:

“There are people who only come out at night,” he said, “Oh, yes. They walk all over town at night. I’ve absolutely seen the vampires, yes.”

When was the Last Time You Watched the Sunset?

When Was The Last Time You
Watched The Sunset?

Sitting on the porch listening to the waves crash, as Edna did in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, I genuinely couldn’t answer that question. Doing so would require slowing down just enough to catch the beauty in life before getting pulled away by the busyness of it. It would require staying in one place for an extended period of time. And your return on that invested time would be the simple joy of those few seconds when the sun meets the water. You have to train your brain to take the much needed time to do as you please and relax. It is definitely easier said than done, especially as a student-athlete post-finals. But resting is something that Edna is quite great at and taught me by example.

She didn’t need to be productive or even have a reason to become “overtaken” by sleep. So I naturally followed her lead and interpreted her actions as the permission I needed, yet rarely granted myself, to rest. I vividly remember taking the types of naps on the beach, that when you wake up, you forget where you are for a moment. My experience was similar to one of my favorite Edna moments with Robert. Edna asks, “How many years have I slept? The whole island seems changed … And when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the Earth? (Chopin 32)”. Although she jokes with Robert in this instance, Edna tends to use rest as a form of resistance and the location in which she makes her boldest stances are at Grand Isle.

As a Redondo Beach native, I was always curious why I left the beach after watching the waves crash with such an innate sense of peace and power. My thoughts would drift and my problems would shift each visit, but I knew I would leave the beach with some type of clarity on the matter. Swinging on the porch bench reading Chopin, these feelings came up more often than not. But for the life of me, I could never put my finger on why these feelings of centeredness, yet strong conviction washed over me after my beach visits. It wasn’t until our seminar discussing the word liminal did I begin to understand my conundrum. My working definition of liminal post-seminar is the space between one thing ending and another beginning: symbolizing the edge of spiritual power and possibility.

Resting in the same setting as Edna, I quite literally tried my best to put my feet in her shoes as I walked along the sand of Grand Isle. I wonder if she reached the edge of this liminal space and felt the same sense of power and possibility. Consequently, I also wonder once she reached this awakened state of mind, how difficult it was to forcibly shift away from the peace and power Grand Isle offered her. At Grand Isle we learn that she combats the “habit” of “unthinkingly” going “through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us”. We see this when she comes back from the beach to use rest as resistance. Her husband finds her in the hammock late at night and requests that she go inside the cottage, but she refuses.

“I simply felt like going out, and I went out”
— Kate Chopin

Edna desires this same agency when she expresses, “I simply felt like going out, and I went out”. However, it does not translate well past Grand Isle. She continues to defy her husband and has little time for pleasantries and conversation with him. But even after buying her pigeon house, “having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual”, she still feels like a “lost soul” at other’s mercy. This is because societal norms weigh heavier outside of Grand Isle versus under the public eye where people work as if they were a “machine”. The same type of autonomy Edna enjoyed on the beach is regarded as childlike behavior amongst her friends in the city. For Edna to have things her own way, she would “have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, and the prejudices of others”. I even noticed that she rests less in the city and ultimately stops resisting at all. I think the constant restlessness she faced contributed to her suicide at the beach as well as continuously being at the mercy of the men in her life. She laughs in response to Robert, her true love, when he speaks of whether Leonce would allow him to become hers. She feels as though only she has the power and control to determine who she belongs to, which will be highly unlikely in her lifetime. All things considered, this is why I believe she turned to the mercy of Grand Isle, the only place that offered her peace and power. If she must be at the mercy of something, it might as well be “the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her”.

Thinking about my time at Grand Isle, I’m most appreciative of the rest Edna showed me which I cherished all over Grand Isle. I found rest on the beaches and the reclining chairs. I found it cutting up watermelon and sharing the slices amongst newfound friends on the porch swing. I found it in the relaxed multiple course meal we had at the Starfish restaurant. But most importantly, I found it listening to the waves crash while watching the sunset. And I hope we can all slow down just enough to catch more glimpses of this kind of beauty. So the next time someone asks, “When was the last time you watched the sunset?”… you’ll know.

Queue “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles

Confronting History

Today I went to the Whitney Plantation. Out of all the places on this trip the Whitney plantation was the last place that I wanted to visit. I feared that it would be a traumatic experience. Listening to the retelling of my ancestors' history is a challenging task, especially when very few in the tour group can truly relate to my family's experiences. So, I braced myself for the worst. 

We did not sugar coat conversations about slavery in my family. This was a constant conversation in my household. I do not know if it made me desensitized or resilient, but it became a topic I usually have no problem discussing. It became somewhat of a running joke between my siblings that my dad could bring just about every conversation back to slavery. For example, I would share that I had a chicken sandwich for lunch, then my dad would go on a 20 minute rant about how the chicken meat we eat today was a product of slavery. He took every opportunity possible to remember our history. However, the environment of the Whitney Plantation was still very overwhelming. It reminds me that this was a time full of pain and trauma that runs so deep that I inherited it because it was too much suffering for just one person to endure. 

In passing our tour guide shares her connection to the identifier African American. She states that she is not African at all; her family was born and raised in the States which makes her an American. This comment reminds me of a series of drawings that I created to challenge the title given to me by those in power: African American. 

For me, the title African American is full of irony and contradiction. I don't feel African. I am given this title because I have brown skin and descend from the Ivory Coast. However, I am so far removed from African culture that I cannot speak the languages, I cannot make traditional foods or relate to the culture. In fact, if I were to visit Africa, I would be called an American.

However, I don't feel American. It was made blatantly clear that the saying “for the people” never truly included me. During the time this statement was created, I would have been considered someone’s property. I would have been deemed the other and stripped of my humanity. My family's enslavement was intended to be perpetual and we were never supposed to be acknowledged as human in America. 

Inherently, I am suspicious of this country and question all forms of history. And rightfully so. My personal history with the country is an example of Afrosurrealism. The experiences of Black people in this country are so gruesome and bizarre that you could mistake the facts as a work of fiction. 

““Everybody work, young and old. If you could only carry two or three sugar cane, you worked. No school, no church 一 you couldn’t sin 一 and Saturday night dey always have a ance, but you worked. Sunday, Monday, it’s it all de same. And if you say, “lawd a-mercy”, de overseer whip you. De old people, dey just set down and cry. It like a heathen part of the country. You has to put your candle out early and shut yourself up, den get up while it’s still dark and start to work.” ”
— Cecile George | Louisiana slave

In Louisiana, some try to argue that slavery around New Orleans was better in terms of degrees of freedom. They argue that there were free people of color or that treatment in the big house was better than the field. However, our tour guide reminds us that the people that worked on Luisana plantations were still enslaved and the institution of slavery in any form is unacceptable. Even if a slave owner gives his enslaved people 10 years of schooling he is still a slave owner. They still play a role in a dehumanizing system and contribute to systems of oppression. 

I refuse to think of these people as tolerable. They were not brave for exploiting the natural resources and spreading their diseases to the native people. They were cowards for creating a system that prosepers on the suffering of Black people. If they wanted to be successful they should have picked themselves up by their bootstraps and picked the sugar themselves. 

There is no time to glorify this time in history. At the Whitney Plantation our tour guide cautions against believing the happy slave depiction in Hollywood and Disneyland. She warns us that most of the history we are taught is created by the people in power to justify their actions. The versions of history found in our history books and media serve as nothing but a lullaby to help some of us sleep soundly at night. 

The memorials at the Whitney Plantation offer the perspective from enslaved individuals. The tour guide shares the history facts. She warns us that the truth can offend people, but it must still be shared. At different moments in the tour, she shares a watered down version of the history, then waits eagerly for questions so that she can share more. It is clear she has accumulated a wealth of knowledge over the years living in Louisiana and working at the Whitney Plantation. 

What I find most powerful about this space are the testimonies from people who were enslaved across Louisiana. The act of etching someone's oral history into a plaque gives their story power. Their stories are raw and undeniable. There is no space for justification; their testimonies simply reflect the truth. Unlike when listening to someone speak or reading from a textbook, it is hard to doubt when confronted with firsthand accounts of people who lived on a plantation like the Whitney.  

Slavery is at the core of every story in this country regardless of race, ethnicity or region. Slavery is the backbone for this country's prosperity therefore this story is woven through all aspects of life. It is about time we start telling the true story of what happened here. The Whitney has just started this process but there are a lot more stories to be told.

Jazz, Jazz, and More Jazz.

Next on our schedule was the Preservation Jazz Hall, but I was exhausted. We’ve been moving for so many days now, and standing for 45 minutes to watch the performance did not sound fun at all. That was until I looked at my watch and 40 minutes had passed, and I realized that what I just experienced was borderline magical.

The inside of the Preservation Jazz Hall.

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje shares the story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden, a famous cornet player and pioneer of jazz. I was quite excited to read this novel as a part of our bookpacking experience as I started playing the trombone in fifth grade, 10 years ago, and played in jazz bands for six of those years. In my time, here are some things that I have learned about jazz:

Jazz is a language. You could become fluent and your vocabulary more complex, like choosing when to pause and let the silence ring, or riff something musically intricate. Watching these performers on stage, you couldn’t deny this. The musicians looked at each other and would smile; you heard hoots when you knew that someone just pulled out a new lick that the others haven’t heard yet; perhaps you noticed the rhythm section in the background adding support to the solo where they felt it fit in, embellishing the phrase. Choosing how to express your thoughts through music, deciding the volume, notes, and whether to have a descending or ascending line, is like crafting a beautiful literary sentence. 

“There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number.”
— Michael Ondaatje

Our group standing in front of a mural depicting one of the bands that Buddy played in. Buddy holds a cornet and has a yellow halo behind his head.

As my music teachers have always said, with jazz, you have to know the rules before you break them. You need to understand what musically works and fits in the chord – how to express it. You begin to know this so well that you can break the rules. Yes, jazz can seem loose and unpredictable, but as Ondaatje explains, “there was discipline, it was just that we didn’t understand it. We thought [Buddy] was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it.” I interpreted this phrase as Buddy wanting to play every note that his cornet could produce, but he was limited by what fits in the song.

This is quite different from classical music where one is expected to ‘play the ink,’ or what is written directly on the page. Of course, you can make it your own by stretching out the length of some notes or exaggerating the dynamics, but only to some extent. This is not to say that there is no beauty in classical music, however. Buddy shares his own experiences with the stability that comes with listening to a classical song by Robinchaux.

“So carefully patterned that for the first time I appreciated the possibilities of a mind moving ahead of the instruments in time and waiting with pleasure for them to catch up.”
— Michael Ondaatje

Jazz puts you in the moment, and that is why it is such a form of self-expression. You are constantly making choices and thinking on the fly about what you will do next. The stability of classical is lovely at times, but when you want freedom and looseness, you want jazz. I experienced this so clearly at the Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade. People were MOVING, and their bodies just took them! I was self-conscious about my dancing at first, but eventually, I couldn’t help it. I listened to the music and let it dictate my movements.

Jazz is also a part of the performer. Your feelings inevitably display itself in the music. Jaelin Brewitt in the novel was aware of an affair that his wife was having with Buddy, and he would “sit down and play, to tip it over into music! To remove the anger and stuff it down the piano from every night… The music was so uncertain it was heartbreaking and beautiful.” Of the performers we watched, I feel that the crowd unanimously fell in love with the trombonist’s lively personality (what can I say? It’s a trombone thing). His excitement showed beautifully in the music. He used the entire length of his slide going up and down, hitting the low range but also the very top. The trumpet seemed much more emotionally contained, and his playing was cleaner and had more direction. The pianist had soul and seemed sentimental.


Now, I must call myself out. I had an ego about my knowledge, questioning how people could be dancing when they didn’t understand this music to its full value (as if I did). I could recognize that the trombonist’s tone was blatty and short and not necessarily amazing, but it was the style, alive. What is the audience doing getting so into this when they don’t even know what they are looking at, what they are listening to! But what a load of crap. This mindset is in full opposition to what jazz is about. I had to check myself, and I looked up again. I saw people dancing, smiling, and immersed in the music through a different lens. This is what jazz is for – uniting people. After all, that’s where it originates. It united African Americans here in New Orleans when they were faced with extreme adversity and had to look to one another to bring joy, that agent being music. This city was built on jazz! You walk anywhere and can find some memorial to this musical past, either in street musicians, murals, or statues. You don’t need to be a trained musician to appreciate how it flows through you or recognize its power.

Jazz was made to be shared and accessible to everyone. This is why Buddy claims that he hated classical music, saying “[Robinchaux] dominated his audiences.”

Jazz is inviting and very much opposite to a dominating relationship. When the trombonist at Preservation Jazz Hall hit a strong low note, he said to the audience “ooo! I like that” and he hit it a few more times. He invites the audience to share this feeling with him. The performers encourage the audience to clap along with them. They cheer each other on and dance to make the audience feel like that is what they should be doing too, just enjoying the music!

Jazz is beautiful. I believe this is the best word to describe something so vibrant, culturally-rich, inclusive, and simply fun.

Now go watch some live jazz.

The Start of Something New

On Saturday, May 13th, eight of my peers and I arrived at the Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans. This marked day one of our 25-day bookpaking trip through Louisiana. Escaping the humid air, we squeezed into a white van filled to the brim without luggage. With my massive green suitcase riding shotgun, we ride over the elevated highways cutting through the swamplands towards Grand Isle, Louisiana. For two hours, I watch the overgrown houses that flash by my window, immersed in the melodies of New Orleans swing jazz in my headphones. 

On December 12th 2022, I told my partner “I think if I could get on this trip, it would be life changing.” I saw this trip as an opportunity to learn about a new place and community, while simultaneously beginning to figure out my own identity. It is a rare experience to travel to a new place for three weeks with people I haven’t met before. It gives me the opportunity to be authentically me, free from judgment. Little did I know then, I was searching for an awakening, and what better place to start than Grand Isle.

In the spirit of bookpaking, I grab my copy of The Awakening and take a short walk to the beach on Sunday morning. I follow the story of Enda Pontellier, who had recently married into a Creole community. While reading, I couldn't help but relate to her struggle to find her place in this new environment. 

In the opening pages of the novel, we get a sense of how Enda is different from her husband and the people she encounters on Grand Isle. Raised as an American protestant with modest ideals, Enda finds herself amongst a crowd that questions her traditional belief system. Robert, Adele and many of the people from the Creole community are affectionate and open. This clash of belief systems propels her on a journey to discover her true values in life. 

 Grand Isle is not your traditional beach vacation. It does not have white sandy beaches. There are no fancy restaurants or massive chain hotels. However there’s a charming simplicity to the town. There is one small grocery chain, a school and a church. At Jo-Bobs, the local convenience store, you can get deliciously seasoned chicken and a slushie for under six dollars. Meanwhile, the Starfish restaurant serves as a gathering stop for locals looking for some Louisiana staples.

Grand Isle with all its charm is not the first place I would think of to have an awakening. However, on this holiday island there are limited responsibilities and few distractions, which leaves a lot of time for contemplation. Similar to Edna, I have excess time to entertain long drawn out thoughts for the first time in months. At USC, I am constantly in planning mode, thriving for academic success. With the pressure of school I find it extremely hard to let my mind flow in and out of conversation. However, on Grand Isle I embraced the opportunity to let my mind run free during moments of rest.

As I walked along the beach, I immersed myself in Edna’s world. Grand Isle has changed a lot since the 1870s when Edna would have wandered along these shores. Renovated beach houses line the Gulf shore, displaying hipped roofs and colorful window panels. Every so ofte, I encounter an empty plot on land beside the beach houses, which reminds me of the destruction from Hurricane Ida. Despite the changes, I still feel the same warm breeze pressing across my back. As I walk further down the beach I feel the sand pick the bottoms of my feet like it would to Enda on her walk home.

Grand Isle is a symbol of independence for both Edna and me. Enda recognizes her freedom through small acts like listening to the piano, swimming and taking a walk on the beach. In these moments, she realizes the agency that she has over her actions. Similarly, I recognize my independence by being able to leave the house without needing to tell someone where I am going. I stay out on late nights walking with friends and listening to the waves. I take time to genuinely learn about the people around me, and learn about myself. 

With her newfound independence Edna begins to live for herself. In Edna’s journey, I see the parts of myself that I neglected for so long, trying to conform to societal norms. Edna’s exposure to the Creole community embracing the things that she was raised not to do changes her outlook on the world. She realizes that breaking the rules can be liberating and that it’s more fulfilling to live on her own terms. 

I had a similar realization on Grand Isle. I let go of my tightly planned days and began to do what feels right in the moment. I sat in the front of the house and enjoyed breakfast. I took long walks along the shore with bare feet. I napped in the middle of the day. I spent hours sitting and thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. 

Similar to Enda, my story of independence and self discovery doesn’t end on Grand Isle. My journey will continue as I travel to the French Quarter in New Orleans. It will be an experience of learning and unlearning and I cannot wait for the next chapter to begin.  

A Catholic Conundrum

““God kills, and so shall we… for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.””
— Lestat, "Interview with the Vampire
 

Cafe Du Monde’s famous powdered beignets alongside a cup of New Orleans chicory coffee, also known as Café Au Leit

Beignets are heavenly. Light, fluffy deep-fried pastries made magnificent with the addition of a heavy coating of finely powdered sugar on top. Because of my love for these pastries, I have created a routine out of having beignet breakfasts. Each morning, after waking up and working out, I head off on foot towards Cafe Du Monde, New Orlean’s most famous beignet restaurant. I hop on the streetcar, which heads down Canal Street until it turns parallel to the Mississippi River, hugging the edges of the French Quarter as it propels me toward my final destination. Jumping off at Dumaine station, I briskly stroll to the Cafe, pick up my beignets and Café Au Leit to go, and then make my way towards the nearby Jackson Square. As I sit down on the park bench, I look up to gaze at the large branches of the oak tree providing me shade on this hot, humid summer day. I then swivel my head towards the large, imposing church sitting adjacent to Jackson Square and towering over the French Quarter. 

One day, when sitting under this magnificent oak tree, after finishing my beignet breakfast, I decided to head towards the church - which I learned from a placard is named the Saint Louis Cathedral after the famed King Louis IX of France - and slowly walked inside as if in a trance. After sitting down on a creaky, old wooden pew to take in the beauty of the church’s interior, my mind started to wander. I started thinking about the book our bookpacking cohort was reading in New Orleans - Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” - focusing specifically on the philosophical religious questions the book raises, how those inquiries arise, and the fitness of New Orleans as a literary setting in which to attempt to answer these faith-based questions. 

The Saint Louis Cathedral towering over Jackson Square

And just a quick side note before diving into the sticky subject of religion, I myself have been an atheist my whole life. Despite this, the role religion plays in our history, as well as today’s social and political scenes is so great that to avoid examining religion out to disbelief would be a disservice to people like me who are trying to better understand a place and its people. In my case, that place is New Orleans.

In Anne Rice’s novel “Interview with the Vampire”, Rice deep dives into examining faith-based questions - specifically questions regarding God’s role in our lives - in the setting of New Orleans. To deal with these massive, overwhelming questions while still telling a compelling story, Rice uses vampires as subjects to form these questions on. For those who haven’t read the book, “Interview with the Vampire” is the story of a plantation owner living in New Orleans in the 1750s who nearly dies but is “saves” when he is transformed into a vampire by another vampire named Lestat. Part one of the book - which is the portion of the book in which most of Rice’s questions of faith can be found - chronicles Louis’ self-reflective quest, with Louis attempting to determine the ethical, social, and most importantly spiritual aspects of vampirism. As Louis further uncovers what it means to be a vampire, he begins to question the nature of vampirism, and in turn the nature of God. Louis contemplates, if God has the power to create life but also the power to destroy life, do life-taking vampires serve as agents of God? In other words, do vampires exist to aid God in the destruction or taking of life by draining the blood out of someone each day to satisfy their hunger, or are they working against God, killing people before the time God has chosen for them to transcend their mortality?

To try and answer these questions of whether vampires are the agents of God or actively work against him, Anne Rice pushes readers to examine what God’s role is in our lives through interactions Louis has in New Orleans. Since the book takes place in the highly Catholic setting of 18th century New Orleans, the mortals that encounter Louis and recognize him ward him away with crosses, calling upon God to smite this vampire, this agent of the devil. Obviously, the religious citizens of New Orleans see vampires as working against God, with vampires releasing people from the mortal world before their time and therefore working to compromise God’s plan. However, Louis’ vampire friend, Lestat, holds a different opinion. He believes that God is not simply a kind, loving creator of life, but God is also in charge of taking life to complete the human life cycle. Because of this, vampires work as agents of God, helping God take life in sync with God’s plan. With these differing opinions, the central question is if vampires fit into God’s plan for humanity and its people, or if they actively work against it by aiding the devil in sowing unholy chaos and disorder.

While the faith-based questions Anne Rice presents in her book revolve around vampires and their role, what these questions are really examining is the role God plays in our lives. Is God simply a force of good, creating life and protecting humanity, or does God take a more holistic approach, working to both create life and take life, therefore managing all stages of the human life cycle? While these are great, probing questions, there is no way to answer these inquiries because there is no way to know God’s intentions or actions. Since the early days of Christianity, religious scholars and intellectuals have been contemplating the same questions Anne Rice poses in her book, and since there is no way to answer such inquiries there will never be agreement on what God’s role is. 

Though unsolvable, it is highly significant that Anne Rice asks these religious questions in her book, as over her lifetime she constantly left and rejoined the Christian faith out of uncertainty. These questions are likely highly important to Anne Rice, and by examining “Interview with the Vampire” readers can gain insight into Rice’s own religious contemplations and considerations. Additionally, recognizing the faith-based questions Anne Rice poses helps in understanding the meaning of Rice’s book, allowing readers to look past the story and dive into why this narrative is being told. This book was made not only to be a compelling read, it was also meant to interrogate religious idealogy and have readers question their own religious beliefs regarding the role of God.

An engraving of the French Quarter’s Saint Augustine Catholic Church made in 1858

These religious questions on the role of God in our lives - which as previously mentioned are set up in the context of the religious role of vampires - are able to be effectively communicated thanks to the setting in which this book is located: New Orleans. New Orleans is the perfect literary setting for a story that questions the role of God in our lives. This is because the Crescent City has a deep-rooted religious, and specifically Catholic, history. When New Orleans was first founded by French colonizers, they were quick to set up Catholic churches and areas of worship around the city, with there being five prominent catholic churches in and around the French Quarter. Additionally, under French rule, it was determined that for colonizers to be faithful subjects of the Crown they had to adopt the Catholic faith. Because of this, the entire city was from its founding engrossed in Catholicism. Later, when slavery began to take root in New Orleans, the French Code Noir - which was a set of laws governing the treatment of slaves - mandated that slaves be instructed and baptized in the Catholic faith, as well as have Sundays off for worship and to attend mass. These various religious historical events shaped New Orleans into a city with a rich Catholic-based culture, making this an amazing city in which to investigate the Catholic faith.

Without these deep religious roots that seeped through New Orleans in the time in which Rice’s book takes place, Rice would not be able to set up the important faith-based questions her book examines. There would be no religiously zealous citizens to scorn the vampires as agents of Satan and the devil, and Lestat - a native of New Orleans himself - would not have had the religious background to contextualize vampires in the grander topic of God’s plan for humanity. So, without New Orleans as a literary setting, there is no strong religious context, meaning there would be no strongly Catholic characters to connect the question of vampires’ roles with questions of God’s role, meaning it would be impossible for Rice to incorporate her complex religious inquiries into her narrative. Without New Orleans, “Interview with the Vampire” is simply a compelling story, lacking the deep meaning that makes the book so great.

As I walked out of the Cathedral, I headed down Saint Louis Street to take in the wonders of the French Quarter. I then made my way back to the hotel by crossing Canal Street - a street that historically divided the French Catholic section of the city from the American Protestant area. I then made my way through the business district where slave auctions were once held, auctions that continued a system of slavery propped up by religious beliefs that maintained white supremacy was ordained by God when he created man. I finally made my way down Saint Charles by streetcar, getting off at the stop located next to Xavier University - the first historical black and Catholic university in America - to walk over to the adjacent Tulane University to read and study. It is impossible not to notice the signs of Catholic influence in New Orleans, just as it is now impossible for me to read a New Orleans literary work and not analyze the religious aspects of the book. Thanks to my stay in New Orleans, I was able to recognize the city’s Catholic influence and the effect it had on Anne Rice’s novel, leading me to obtain a much richer understanding of the novel and its meaning.

Under the Covers

Bella stands in front of a vintage mirror taking a photo. In the background is the Pharmacy museum which was filled with old medical paraphernalia of the 19th century.

Hiding under the covers. Hiding under the covers is where I find my comfort in a time of distress, fear, and most importantly when I find something scary. Well, for three days of the trip, I find myself hiding under the covers and clinging on to our second novel, Interview with The Vampire by Anne Rice. As I lay protected by the warm sheets of the hotel bedding, I wince and writhe as Lestat makes his next calculated kill. These tales are somewhat of a mystery to me as I have neglected to indulge in such genre of writing. I had always found it obscure and not to my liking as one could not fathom to imagine the world in which these creatures lived. It is obscure and mysterious, unlike life in my small beach town back home. 

Upon arriving in the setting of Interview with The Vampire, it does not take long for me to realize the inspirations that Anne Rice drew upon for her novel. In fact, it is hard to ignore the eerie and hair prickling feelings that you get when you enter the French Quarter of New Orleans. As you pass through the hustle and bustle of Bourbon Street in the daytime, it seems a perfectly normal tourist attraction. Laughter and smiles fill the faces of those surrounding you, a comforting place to be. 

An alter to the Papalegba is covered in offerings, jewelry and alcohol. Papalegba is said to be the gatekeeper to the afterworld. He is always pictured as a sweet old man and is paired commonly with St. Peter.

As you step further into the French Quarter and wander away from Bourbon Street and truly dig into the quarter outside of the bustling alleys, you find yourself in a setting of Anne Rice’s novel. Down one street you are engulfed by vintage tales of the past. You see a VooDoo museum that details the curse after curse that someone could procure during the 19th century. On the other side you have the old Pharmacy museum. Two floors filled with vials of distinct powders, serrated tools that would be inserted into a patient's body, lobotomy aids, anything that would make the average human feel bombarded by a cold gust of the unnatural. Down another street you hit the jackpot; vampires. Vampire boutiques, vampire restaurants, a man who will chisel your teeth into fangs, an alcoholic concoction in the form of blood, a whole ghastly array that plunges you directly into Anne Rice’s world. 

While approaching these landmarks in the daytime can give you a feeling of uneasiness, it is only when the sun slips below the horizon that you can get a taste of the setting that Anne Rice’s two vampires, Lestat and Louis, experienced on a nightly basis. When nightfall rushes in like an unsuspecting ghost, the whole city gets flipped upside down. Instead of smiles and laughter down Bourbon Street you are greeted by creatures that you believe were once human not more than a few hours ago. These creatures who are overtaken by the sweet temptation of liquor and luminous bar lights. They all of a sudden become possessed. They are no longer in control of their own bodies. Their mouths ramble heinous things at one another, they stumble through the cobblestone streets, their clothing transforming from a curated ensemble to a disheveled costume doused in the scent of absinthe. 

Cornstalk Hotel stands basked in the night light and lit up by the occupants inside. This hotel is positioned right next to the Andrew Jackson Hotel which is said to be haunted by five young boys that died tragically when they were unable to escape a fire.

In order to obvert your gaze and to hide from their empty eyes, I look up. My vision is greeted with the French architecture that resides on each house front of these streets. The iron work is delicately crafted in each and every balcony. Each fleur de lis distinct feature silky smooth and the gentle designs jutting from the corners of the awning. The iron work provides a sort of regality that is both untouchable yet comforting. Each and every home is fit for a King, or in Anne Rice’s case an elegant and poised vampire. I can imagine Lestat and Louis standing on a balcony, protected by the fleur de lis drinking their glass of wine, or at least appearing to be a glass of wine to onlookers and assessing their next target. I can understand how their nightly activities could go unnoticed in the midst of these humans turned creatures at dusk. For as Anne Rice writes,

“ ‘Never in New Orleans had the kill to be disguised. The ravages of fever, plague, crime – these things competed with us always, and outdid us.’ ” 

It is not until I really was able to look around and examine this city and dismantle each cobblestone piece by piece until you are able to understand Anne Rice’s writing. The creatures of the night that terrorize you and make you long for home. The possibilities of VooDoo and ghosts around every corner leave you fearful each step you take. The possibility that you may just be greeted by Lestat and Louis. Or the painstaking fear that these characters were based on true characters that roam these streets at nightfall. Characters that pray on the incapacitated and innocent, sucking them of their lives, their virtue, their wealth. These shady creatures that lurk under the radar and are undiscovered because of the ravages of fever, plague, and crime that flank these streets. For this reason I retreat to my hotel room and find myself yet again protected by the covers, hidden from Anne Rice’s world.





Bodies Discarded, Others Refreshed

A state of peaceful languor pulls me in and out of a whispering sleep as I sit upon a barricaded porch. The balcony outside is sun bleached and covered with the mangled bodies of countless pests and once-buzzing nuisances, but inside the mesh enclave I am safe. Safe to inhabit my own body, safe to experience bliss, safe to consume the words of Kate Chopin which resonate more deeply after feeling the physicality of Edna Pontellier’s existence in The Awakening.

I received my copy of this novella from a friend last October. I had just met him a few weeks prior, and he gave me this book as a birthday gift. It was an unexpected act of kindness that has persisted in his general demeanor throughout our subsequent friendship. The sweetness reflected here is a difficult one to find: selfless and simple, resolutely human. Coming to Grand Isle, I was reacquainted with this idea of sweetness. The night was thick with mosquitoes and darkness when we ambled in our tightly-packed van across bridges and swamps, eventually arriving in the small town. The trip had lulled me into a cycle of dozing, similar to that later experience on the porch, but this was more dependent on a genuine lack of sleep rather than a comfortable state of lethargy. My final departure from sleep in the van was jolting - we had gone over some rock, and my eyes sprung open, met by Grand Isle’s silhouettes of ominously stilted homes, lumbering and taciturn in their angularity. Their ambivalence to our arrival implored me to stay awake and I sat peering out at these shapes, unaware of the eventual relaxation they would bring. I understood immediately that this unique architecture was formulated as a defense against the disastrous hurricanes so prevalent in this region. I understood their necessity, and then gladly I understood how their necessitated forms gave life to privately sublime occurrences: as we progressed through the vacation homes, I began to witness Sweetness again. A family gathered under one such porch with their brightest flood lights on, dazzling my sleep-sensitive eyes. More remarkable than the light, though, was the situation underneath. Edna’s family, when alone and not in the camaraderie of their summer friends, ate dinners guarded by familial discontent, rife with arguments about race tracks, glimmering displays of crystalline glamor, hurried endings due to songs reminiscent of scandal and passion. No, this was different. It was simple, just a family circled around a newspaper-covered folding table stacked high with the simmered bodies of ocean-dwellers and a host of well-seasoned landfare. A crawfish boil. This is what I had come to Louisiana for: communal experience and visceral pleasures, the culmination and highest form of which being the act of Bookpacking as a group. This entrance, this apprehension turned to affection, would prepare me for the variety of personal emotions and literary concurrences to ensue.

Last summer, I accidentally embarked on my own sort of Bookpacking experience - it traced the trellouses of my own mental landscape, the veins of my own history rather than that of another. I focused my literary attentions on the disdainful ecstasy of girlhood, beginning with The Virgin Suicides in my childhood home, then My Year of Rest and Relaxation as I lolled about waiting to go to New York City, where I lived alone and commuted to work and read The Bell Jar. I relished in these tales of femininity’s inherent melancholy. The Awakening was, in many ways, a continuation of this: a woman’s deeply gnawing desire for individuality precluded by rest, guided by a separation from a (relatively, considering Edna is a wealthy white woman) oppressive society. So, for personal agency. Chopin so poignantly writes, “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight – perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman” (Chapter 6). The young woman, full of passion and despair, still hopeful for a future yet utterly despondent at her state of reality, might be the most apt creature in the world to grapple with such ideas.

However, while the setting of my home or of New York City connected vaguely to the books that I was reading, with The Awakening I was placed directly on the sands of Edna’s desires and in the waters of her demise. It is the water itself which spoke to me so tenderly about these both maiden and matronly matters. Chopin continues the prior quote, “...The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in 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” (Chapter 6). Though voiced through Edna, these words sound as if they were not written but simply transferred from Kate Chopin’s soul and materialized in the ink of these pages. Reading these words, I know that Kate ensconced herself in that softness and, perhaps, waited to succumb to its grandiosity. Sitting on the porch and reading these words, I see Kate, I see Edna, I see womankind enveloped in these waves. I see myself put the book down, I see my body traverse the hot sand and plunge into the cool water, I see this from above and I see us all together. I am in the water with new friends, my tangible female companions to accompany the literary and historical ones of Edna and Kate. We are all in this infinity together.

Of course, the ocean has long been the topography of the woman. Salted water is pulled to the shore by the moon, cyclically, as fertile blood is eked from the woman by that same celestial body. That day, the Gulf Sea was Mother’s Womb. It took us all in, again girls under Her playful benevolence, again women under Her massive severity, new souls added to Her endless supply. For a moment, I felt Edna entreat me to join her in pinkness and hums. The vast openness is inviting as a final resting place; Oh to die happy! With joyous heart and sunkissed skin! Her death was a victory, Edna’s literary stand against Kate’s literal perils. But my victory will not be so. My victory’s existence is not yet known except that it begins with the delicious delirium of sunshine and ink, with elegant prose and a previous ennui that, with each moment passing under bright sunshine and amongst still brighter individuals, lifts into a precious enjoyment of body and mind.

But I thought too of the bodies the bodies the bodies – the workers on the oil rigs burned and drowned both at the same time, screaming out and gurgling in, full of fear and desperation. Scorched and bloated I imagine some settled down to the sand, picked apart by crabs, and other more buoyant cadavers devoured by toothy fish. This is their sea too. This is the reality of the ocean itself, of water with its multitudes of rivers flowing in and out and estuaries and swamps all creating this network of suffering and of glee. First a peaceful suicide, then a screeching massacre, and lastly, us. Soaking it in, spitting it out.

Contemplating these Bodies, I saw a fin in the water. Almost masochistically, I saw my death right in front of me. I thought about joining Edna in my moments of floating reflection, but I am a coward because I still wanted to live. Cowardice, when well-intentioned, is permissible. In those moments I saw those Grand Isle graves, those bodies marked by French names and crosses askew from years of torrents. I didn’t want to join them yet because I had also seen the school boys playing basketball by the cemetery, had seen their lackadaisical mirth drawn from simple play. A younger boy shrieked and clapped when the older boy tossed his ball right through the net. I wondered if their mothers loved them even if Edna did not love her children. And then I did not care; it was this one individual moment of play that set their hearts ablaze. Edna did not spite her children in her death. She set them free with her bravery, her suicide. Seeing these boys, seeing this cemetery, seeing that fin in the water, I set myself free with my cowardice; my will to live.

This video originally had much brighter hues, but when uploaded onto this website the image was dulled. I could not fix this, but perhaps this is how Kate Chopin would’ve wanted it… Her spirit lives on…

A Few Discoveries

When we drove on the bridges and streets attempting to locate the holiday house our Maymester group was going to stay in, I must admit that I felt unnerved. I was here in an extremely unfamiliar place, looking out of the window and simply seeing darkness, open land, and glistening water, much different from the bright Los Angeles city that I had become well-acquainted with. In reading The Awakening, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how Edna, the woman whose story and transformation we follow throughout the novel, felt. She married a Creole man, a person of an entirely different culture from her American background, yet she was expected to effortlessly assimilate to this new place with different standards. In a time when a woman’s behavior was heavily watched and critiqued, fear of straying from the norm must have been the cause of much of her anxiety and obedience in the beginning of the novel. I wonder if she felt similar to the way I did, quite aware that she could say something wrong at any moment with this new group of people as opposed to the comfort of long-term relationships at home. Beyond this individual connection to Edna, our group definitely stuck out like a sore thumb, and I could only imagine that she would have felt the same. Walking into the Starfish, a small restaurant in Grand Isle, I couldn’t help but feel that all eyes turned to our strange grouping of people, obviously foreign to the area.

A view from our car, entering Grand Isle as the sun began to set and our surroundings turned darker.

Contrasting with her initial nervous feelings about this new environment, Edna found a deep calm in Grand Isle, and so did I. She peered into the openness of the ocean and hesitated to enter this abyss, but she eventually embraced its power by leaping into it. Though a different kind of fear, our group hesitated to go into the water at first too because we were fearful of pollution, having heard of oil spills in the past. I didn’t go beyond dipping my toes in, getting a tantalizing feel of the warm Atlantic Ocean. This became quite funny in retrospect as Andrew shared that he had gone swimming, that Edna had clearly gone swimming, and that it was just murky from the sand. With this newfound security, I began to crave the water. I ran into the ocean the next day, quickly lathering on my sunscreen and not letting it set as one is supposed to (likely causing the many tan lines I received). I felt a sense of freedom. I had been to many beaches, beautiful ones at that, but I looked to my left and right and saw no other body in the water – just me. That was an entirely new feeling; it was as though the ocean belonged to me, and I could swim as far down the coast as I desired. Yes, I owned the water, but I also succumbed to it. I lifted my feet from the seafloor, put my head up, and floated. I simply existed on this body of water, letting it choose where to take me with the currents. I felt bonded to Edna in that moment, how she must have felt the water wrap around her body and carry her in the waves in the same way.

Grand Isle seemed to be a place of discovery, not because of the life-changing critical decisions that one has to make as we may do in a fast-paced world, but because of the single, the almost only choice to relax. I experienced a new meaning to this word on the trip. I even hear it spoken with a slow exhale… “relax.”

After swimming as one with the water and basking in the intense sun, I felt as though I was in a daze. I lazily made my way back up the beach house steps and plopped myself on a chair. I continued reading the novel, but this time, I became totally consumed by the words on the page because my mental energy was only directed here and nowhere else. As we headed back inside for our seminar, I remember feeling purely relaxed. When was the last time I felt like this? It must have been years. At home, even when I have “nothing to do,” I still feel pressured to do something because God forbid that I sit idle. In Grand Isle, there was nothing else I could possibly be doing but reading. When I took a deep breath, I recognized that there was no tightness in my chest. I looked at my fingernails as if I had seen them for the first time. They were long and strong, much different from the usual short length that comes from my picking them so often as a nervous habit. I know that Edna learned to feel this same freedom in Grand Isle over the course of her holiday.

““When Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of relief. A feeling that was unfamiliar but very delicious came over her. She walked all through the house, from one room to another, as if inspecting it for the first time.””
— Kate Chopin

I began to understand how as Edna got a taste of freedom and agency over herself, it became impossible to let go. I walked along the water, and all I had to do was what I wanted to do. If I wanted to take a step to my left and wet my toes, I could. I could turn around and walk back, or I could walk for miles and miles. The choice was mine and mine only. Though this is simple, nobody was there to pose another option. I would dare say that I did not even appreciate what it meant to be alone until this trip.

Now, while I thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of Grand Isle, I am at times so devastatingly held back from enjoying the simple beauty of things because of my knowledge. After taking a variety of classes that essentially highlight how humans have destroyed the world, I have never been able to see things the same. I think I most resonated with Edna regarding her experience of no longer living in ignorance. I looked out onto the beach and saw the oil rigs far along the horizon, thinking of the drilling that must be happening along with it. Learning of the oil spill in Grand Isle, I recalled how my oceanography professor shared that the oil we see on the surface is only 15% of what was spilled, and most of it resides deep underwater. I looked at the land and saw endless agriculture, thinking of the trees that must have been cut down, ridding the place of rich biodiversity. As you likely can tell, this is just depressing. Yet I would not, not recommend it. Edna mentioned something so beautiful that I will refuse to forget:

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
— Kate Chopin

This mindset I have acquired in recent years does cause me to suffer, but it also grants me something extremely powerful: choice. I choose to live my life no longer in ignorance because I can now consciously make changes to reduce the damage I feel humans have made. Though some of this action is small in scale, it grants me agency in the outcome of our world.

Over the course of my time there, I learned a variety of contrasting things that somehow worked together. Learning to relax, my brain was de-fogged and given room for thought. This room allowed me to appreciate The Awakening for its full value in relation to my life. I am incredibly grateful to have experienced Grand Isle through the lens of Edna as it entirely shaped my perception of this special place.

Independen[sea]

Houses liter the coastline of the Grand Isle. On the Grand Isle, all of the homes are built on stilts to prevent flooding from the yearly hurricane season.

Houses liter the coastline of the Grand Isle. On the Grand Isle, all of the homes are built on stilts to prevent flooding from the yearly hurricane season.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been independent. Sure, I’m an only child, and sure I have made my own way in the world, but there has never been a time where I wasn’t supported by an army of love, reassurance, and encouragement. I have always felt somewhat protected and sheltered from the outside world. This is who I based my person off of, I was a reflection off of those around me. Looking in retrospect, I in no way see this as a negative portrayal of who I’ve become, but instead a realization, or an awakening one might say.

Students stand waiting for the van right out of the airport. At this point in our journey, the rain came down for the first time.

On the first day of this trip as I hugged my family good-by, I felt somewhat empty. I didn’t know what to expect on the other side of the airport door. Whether my next month would be filled with treachery and a pang for returning to my comfortable bed with my dog nestled by my side, or if the next twenty-six days were going to be exactly what I needed to make myself feel fulfilled.

Right off of the plane, it started to rain. While many think that rain may be a sign of danger, or a warning, I see it as the earth giving a gentle cleanse to everything around it. Rain is a washing away of all the worries, the past, and seemed like an omen to me as I ran outside and let the hot drops of water wash over me. The rain pelted on for hours more, along the drive down to the Grand Isle. As the water-streaked windows filled my view, I saw a landscape like never before. Long trees with thin arms sprouting from mere water. Their existence was unfathomable to me as not only were they protected by this murky water, but they were green, a rarity in California landscape. Continuing down the road we saw the landscape alter into marshlands which looked like a million little islands all thriving off of the Mississippi river. It was strange to think that one mother of endless water gave birth to all of these little tufts of grass and the contents that remain inside them.

Bella sits petting a dog at Jo Bobs Gas & Grill. This dog is one of many that roam free on the Grand Isle, this one in particular was the owner's dog.

Bella sits petting a dog at Jo Bobs Gas & Grill. This dog is one of many that roam free on the Grand Isle, this one in particular was the owner's dog.

As the sun began to set, we started to approach our final destination, Grand Isle, LA. The landscape began to shift and the architecture around me felt foreign and cold, which provided me with some weariness and a sense of unease about my feelings for this whole adventure. The houses were on stilts, they were filled with color, and a type of person I had never seen before, a Southerner.

Alas we approached our humble abode, and while a sense of relief from the long days' travel washed over me, there was still an undeniable fear that gnawed at my stomach. One that ate at me until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Upon reopening them, the windows were filled with a light glow. I stumbled out of bed, cautious not to wake anyone up, and headed for the porch. There. There it was, waiting for me, beckoning to me like a call home. The ocean stood roaring with waves that whipped back and forth from the pressure of the wind. The sun shone brightly onto the sand and casted a gentle glow upon the water's surface. The air was warm yet inviting and filled with the mist of the sea. This is what I had been waiting for all along, this was in fact, just what I needed.

Throughout the day, I was entranced by the text of The Awakening, a book I had read years before at a much younger age, and at the time felt very hard to understand and rather out of place for a seventeen year old. But now I stand here today, with the humid air lapsing against my skin, and the smell of the Louisiana salt water, surrounded by a group of individuals that I know little about, and somehow this book is enchanting, all encompassing and a complete representation of my experience. Edna, the main character, is a nuanced woman living in an outdated society. Her expectations were to care for a family, be a silent and obeying wife, and to live a rather uneducated life. But her curiosity and ideas plague her, and she goes onto have herself an “awakening.” She finds what is truly important to her, and important to her life. While she goes to great lengths of getting to a place where she feels free and unchained from her old self, including death, I feel that this trip has done that for me. I feel unchained from the society that bound me to the stress of needing to be “perfect,” at all times. As I sit here, writing this, my focus is not on anything besides myself, my discoveries, and the ever-expanding world around me.

The Starfish Restaurant stands on the main road of the Grand Isle. While the Grand Isle is minimal in its food options, the Starfish caters to locals and tourists alike.

I’m captivated by the culture, it is one that is foreign to me and unbeknown in it’s customs. In The Awakening, this culture is described as inviting and involved. It’s culture lives with a mindset that you work to live and not live to work. It’s rare that you see this kind of care free attitude and I saw my first taste when we dined at a little restaurant, frankly the towns only restaurant, The Starfish. We were greeted with a warm smile and a spirit that could make anyone feel at home. Tiffany, our waitress was one of the most interesting characters I have ever met. She was beaming with happiness and was unforgivingly just being herself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a waitress disregard the outlined “duties” or “customs” of a job to fit their personality but Tiffany sure did. While she had a job, she make it her job. She truly embodied this inviting Creole culture and everything that Kate Chopin was describing.

It took me a long time to be comfortable with the mindset that Tiffany had, and I don’t know if I will ever be completely comfortable with this mindset in the work-culture that America breeds. However, I gained understanding of this feeling because for a brief moment I felt free. Understanding this feeling is like no other until you are sunning yourself on the porch of a holiday home, sinking in the breeze of the Gulf where you are perfectly nestled between the water on a small piece of unbeknown land. Here is where I learned to live life how it is meant to be lived. Free of my worries, and unphased by the possibility of the future.

Our Month of Rest and Relaxation

It was day one of Bookpacking and I’d been up since five in the morning. The day before, I woke up at five in the morning, too, to primp and groom myself ahead of my parents’ six AM arrival time in order to secure good seats for the 140th annual USC Commencement. I sat in the heat, weighed down by a stack of fragrant leis, and walked across the stage with bleeding feet to accept my diploma. My extended family came out to support me, and I made the rounds with sincere gratitude and feigned energy. The day prior I’d spent submitting finals, finishing work projects, cleaning, packing, readying myself for another journey entirely, and by the time my family cleared out and I’d helped my mother clean up the dishes and graduation-themed décor, I was more than ready to fall into bed, my alarm set for five AM sharp.

It was this on my mind as our van rumbled down the raised Louisiana highways, past cypress swamps and dilapidated telephone lines with poles listing so far to the side they looked like masts in an abandoned pirate shipyard. I was tired. Bone tired. Dead tired. Social battery drained to zero, non-recyclable, dispose with caution.

Our blue beachside cottage in Grand Isle, Louisiana. An unexpected, last-minute delight after our arranged accommodations collapsed.

Our blue beachside cottage in Grand Isle, Louisiana. An unexpected, last-minute delight after our arranged accommodations collapsed.

I was surrounded by my new classmates, my travel buddies and soon-to-be friends, but the exhaustion was weighing down my cheeks, and all I could bring myself to look forward to is the moment I could finally rest.

Lucky for me, we were headed for Grand Isle, where, à la Kate Chopin, we had a beachside cottage waiting for us, specifically for the purpose of rest.

Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, follows Edna Pontellier, an American woman navigating Creole society in the 1870s as she vacations on the beach, strolls around New Orleans, and awakens to a burgeoning independence and passion that has laid dormant within her for her entire life. The novel’s subject matter is abstract, but poignant; the “awakening” to oneself, that vague urgency that comes with the consciousness of one’s own unarticulated potential. Through uninterrupted leisure and rest, Edna awakens.

Much like Edna, this Maymester marks a voyage towards independence for many of us. Travel, and by necessity the separation from the social and material comforts of our day-to-day lives, lends itself to self-discovery and individuation. We should all hope to awaken to some inner potential—whether that’s a love of reading, our ability to forge new connections, the joy in embarking to places unknown, or simply gaining awareness of what it feels like to sit in conscious contemplation of our experiences. None of that would be possible without one essential ingredient—rest.

By divine professorial authority, we have been instructed not just to keep up with our reading, blogging, and essaying, but to learn to rest. Before we can adjust to the rhythms of the Big Easy, we must first teach ourselves to slow down. To read our books in peaceful silence. Sit on the porch swing. Feel the warm sand. Watch the waves. Sleep.

The ocean like a wide-open field, and the liminal space on the beach.

The porch swing of my Romantic dreams. If only there weren’t mosquitos and I would’ve stayed out there all night like Edna in her hammock.

As we soaked in the days in our Grand Isle home, I found that there are so many more hours in the day when all you have to do is read, write, and rest. I felt the urge to multitask, to maximize, to struggle against the passage of time finally beginning to fall away. I had time. I could change into my swimsuit and dip my feet into the water. I could cook some food. I could take a warm shower. I could nap—and I did, sometimes twice a day—on the beach or on the porch or on the couch or in my bed. It was this potential, almost more than the actions themselves, that allowed me to finally release the stress I had been carrying with me through the end of the semester and into my graduation.

All the while, I delved into Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, sitting before the same ocean vista as Edna. I found myself moved not only by Chopin’s beautiful imagery but also by the subtlety of her subject matter. The novella, like its characters, meanders, without concrete structure, anchored not by a conventional plot but rather by its exploration of Edna’s interiority. This marks a departure from the Arthurian style of fiction, where the actions of protagonists and antagonists are guided by the demands of the plot. The advent of psychology in the Early Modern period changed literature forever; in this sense, The Awakening was ahead of its time, resembling a post-Freudian interest in the novel as a psychological portrait of a character.

“She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.”

The nuances of Edna’s psychology are observed by more than just the reader; the characters around her—particularly Mr. Pontellier—react with concern and suspicion to her emergent interiority. Before her awakening, Edna’s emotions “had never taken the form of struggles,” remaining entirely internal and presenting no conflict with her ability to function as a well-mannered member of society. There existed a disconnect between Edna’s emotions and her behavior. However, this shifts after her summer in Grand Isle, when she can no longer ignore the feelings within her and takes action to align her life with her interior self. Her new behavior defies convention, an inconvenience to the people around her which prompts her husband to pathologize her discontent. Mr. Pontellier considers Edna’s unchaperoned walks throughout New Orleans such a sign of impropriety and bizarreness that he seeks counsel from a doctor, rather than recognize Edna’s frustration with the constraints of her life as a woman in the 1870s. He urges Edna to attend her sister’s wedding—to rest, to see her family, to get fresh air, and to remove her from the prying eyes of Creole society—but Edna refuses. Finally, to mitigate the scandal caused by Edna’s townhouse rental, Mr. Pontellier announces a trip to Europe in the newspaper without consulting Edna.

Art based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” whose protagonist slowly deteriorates into insanity under the restrictions of the “rest cure.”

Mr. Pontellier’s frantic actions reveal a sinister side to vacation; rest can be weaponized. Historically, rest has been used to simultaneously treat and punish atypical behavior in women. The “rest cure” was once a common treatment for “female hysteria” and other clinical conditions that in modern terminology could refer to anything from generalized anxiety and depression, to post-partum psychosis, multiple sclerosis, or even just sexual frustration. This treatment, as depicted in the famous short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," involved bed rest and strict avoidance of any intellectual stimulation for weeks at a time. Women who complained of ailments, displayed symptoms of mental illness, or rebelled against the patriarchal order could be locked in rooms for indefinite rest. Nowadays, it is easy for us to forget the oppressive potential of enforced rest (i.e. isolation and understimulation) when we crave it so much. Edna refuses to go on the trips her husband suggests, resisting his attempts to pathologize her newfound independence. However, it is impossible to ignore the positive influence of rest and travel in the novella, the liminal space of the beach at Grand Isle, and the uninterrupted time for rest and contemplation during which Edna’s awakening took root. Rest does create space for important growth and personal realizations, for Edna then and for us now. It is no wonder that, at the end of the story, Edna chooses to return to Grand Isle of her own volition, shedding her worldly restrictions once and for all.

In the spirit of Bookpacking, on our last day in Grand Isle, I decided to get in the water. I wanted to know what Edna felt, to feel the rejuvenation of endless sea stretching before me. I swam out far, beyond the breaking waves, and bobbed above the current. It was, to me, intentional activation of the senses. Intentional rest. Out there in the deep, far too deep to anchor my feet to the sand, Francesca spotted an ominous fin. My pleasure turned to panic in an instant. We raced back to shore. She was a stronger swimmer than I, and so I fell behind. My arms were tired. In that moment I shared Edna’s final fear of losing strength. But instead of the hum of bees, I heard my new friends laughing in the surf up ahead of me. And so I swam back to shore, slowly, slowly.

Wakening to “The Awakening” by Running Grand Isle

On each of our three days' stay in Grand Isle, I woke up promptly at 6:00 AM before the sun had risen. I threw my workout gear on, laced up my running shoes, and started my hours-long journey jogging down the beach. On the second day of our stay here in this prime Louisiana vacation destination, I decided to run further inland of the island to find a tree to do pull-ups off. While this obsessive workout behavior may very well be a problem I should address, in this situation my obsession allowed me to recognize a key aspect of Grand Isle that I wouldn’t have been able to truly recognize otherwise. Grand Isle is an extremely small island. Running parallel to the ocean, its length is only seven miles long and its width is even less impressive. For instance, when running the width of the island, it only took me a mere five minutes of passing through small, quaint neighborhoods and crossing near-deserted roads to jog from one side of the island to the other. With such a tiny island, there simply isn’t much space for people to spread out.

A Google Street View image of the street I ran down which helped me realized the small width-wise size of Grand Isle. It is important to note this image was taken in 2013 before Ida. Now various houses on the block lay in waste or are under repair.

While a trivial realization, fully recognizing the small size of Grand Isle did help me understand a key aspect of one of the books we read in Grand Isle for bookpacking, Kate Chopin’s "The Awakening". For those not familiar with the book, the story follows the tale of Edna Pontellier, an American protestant who marries into a Creole family in New Orleans. Chopin is discontent with her life as a mother and wife, leading her to try and break free of restraints placed upon her as a woman in a patriarchal society. Readers witness Edna trying to break free first in Grand Isle, a Louisiana coastal vacation island in which the beginning of the story takes place, and later in New Orleans. In the novela, all the various characters introduced in the section of the book set on Grand Isle, including both Edna and the Creole cohort, seem to know each other well from their interactions on the island. They act as if they are one big family when they wade into the ocean together at night, attend church as a cohort, and come together for meals.

While the intimate and near familial connection between the individual characters on Grand Isle can partially be chalked up to a similarity in the Creole characters’ backgrounds as well as their warm and friendly French-influenced personalities, the main factor contributing to the strength of the characters’ bond is simple: space. Not only is Grand Isle a small island, but the houses in which the characters lived were consolidated in one small square section of the island, amplifying the lack of distance between residents. This consolidation of Grand Isle vacation housing was due to the planning of the entrepreneurs who transformed Grand Isle into a vacation destination, who chose to transform the slave cabins of Grand Isle’s old plantation into vacation housing (pictures shown below). Because of this, the vacationers and their residences on Grand Isle which are featured in Kate Chopin’s book were extremely close to one, making interaction – which could likely lead to residents bonding and even forming friendships - between residents not simply likely but inevitable.

Pictures illustrating the layout of the plantation run on Grand Isle from 1816 until its shutdown shortly after the passing of the Emancipation Proclomation (1863). The left image shows how the plantation itself only took up a portion of the larger island, while the right image reveals the close proximity of the slave cabins, which were later converted into the vacation housing in which Kate Chopin’s characters reside in.

It is important to note that the close proximity of Grand Isle vacationers to one another is significant because it is a strange anomaly not found in traditional vacation experiences. Typically, with vacation destinations, vacationers are purposefully spread out to allow residents to enjoy a private or semi-private experience. This is especially true with expensive vacation destinations, where residents pay extra for complete privacy. However, in Grand Isle, this is oddly not the case, as even though it is an exclusive and relatively expensive vacation destination, residents are packed together like sardines in a can. One way to explain this anomaly is that the residents of Grand Isle may in fact want to be close to one another specifically so they can meet other Creoles of similar socioeconomic status. Similar to how today’s billionaires and ultra-rich individuals come together at premier events across the globe to connect with others of similar backgrounds and experiences, these wealthy Creoles may want to do the same during their luscious summer vacations. So, businessmen such as Edna’s husband can fraternize and gamble with fellow businessmen and New Orleans elite at The Club. At the same time, their wives and children can mingle on the beach, in their vacation houses, and at church services.

This sense of community that is created through a lack of space on Grand Isle is highly impactful to Chopin’s story and how it unfolds. In this tightknit community, our protagonist, Edna, meets Robert - who is her love interest and the man whose rejection of her is the final straw that leads her to commit suicide at the end of the book – as well as the many other influential characters she interacts with both on summer vacation in Grand Isle and back in New Orleans upon her return to her home city. In other words, every character that Edna interacts with and helps guide her immense character development through the story is introduced to Edna thanks to the close proximity and corresponding tight bond of Grand Isle vacation community.

The influence Grand Isle’s relatively small size on its community is not only important in Chopin’s book and the time period of the 1850s in which it was set, it also holds relevance in our present. Running around Grand Isle while cursing the absurd heat and humidity of Louisiana all the way, I certainly took note of the size of the island, but I also witnessed how connected this small vacation community was. As I jogged along oak-tree lined southern suburban neighborhoods, I watched as neighbors greeted each other warmly as they drove or walked by. I saw two mothers watch their kids play on the swing set in one of their front yards and locals warmly chatting in the parking lot of the local supermarket before driving off in their large Ford pickup trucks. Running along the beach, I witnessed families setting up beach chairs, speakers, tarps, and food in preparation for a beach day. College students and teens on summer break splashed around in the waves or played a game of volleyball together, enjoying the warm day and the temperate ocean water. There is a sense of community on Grand Isle that I haven’t witnessed or experienced anywhere else I have vacationed. While I’m used to a coldness and lack of interaction between vacationers wherever I travel, the Grand Isle residents seem connected in a way that I believe largely boils down to space. If there’s only seven miles of land to work with and a limited number of residents, people are bound to run into one another and strike up conversation that could possibly lead to friendship, adding to the sense of community on the Gulf Coast island.

Though running is not for everyone, I encourage anyone who comes to Grand Isle to explore the island in one way or another. By doing this, travelers truly get a feel for the size of the island as well as the strong bond that the island’s tonight community holds. Not only will this heightened understanding of Grand Isle allow visitors to better analyze novels set on the island such as Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, but it will also allow vacationers to better connect with the Grand Isle community for which they are temporarily a part of during their stay. There’s fun to be had on the island, but there’s a lot of learning to be had as well, so be sure to to walk, run, bike, drive, and simply explore this amazing and storied island when you visit.