Book contents
- New Orleans
- Imagining Cities
- New Orleans
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Writer’s City
- Chronology
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 Royal Street – A Masked Ball
- 2 St. Claude Avenue – Hard Times and Good Children
- 3 Esplanade Avenue – Escape Routes
- 4 Basin Street – Memory and Music
- 5 St. Charles Avenue – Blood and Money
- 6 Outskirts – Writing through Loss
- Want More?
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
- Plate Section
4 - Basin Street – Memory and Music
Congo Square – Storyville – Tremé
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2023
- New Orleans
- Imagining Cities
- New Orleans
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Writer’s City
- Chronology
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 Royal Street – A Masked Ball
- 2 St. Claude Avenue – Hard Times and Good Children
- 3 Esplanade Avenue – Escape Routes
- 4 Basin Street – Memory and Music
- 5 St. Charles Avenue – Blood and Money
- 6 Outskirts – Writing through Loss
- Want More?
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
This chapter begins by discussing a lost Toni Morrison manuscript about two different parts of this neighborhood that surrounds Basin Street, Storyville, and Congo Square, and from there it sketches the early history of both of these as well as of nearby Tremé. In each of these sections, after outlining their histories, there then follows a literature-based delineation of the major themes associated with the areas. Given that African-American music is understood to have begun in Congo Square, and that Jazz itself came to widespread attention through Storyville, the function of music is a key theme through all of this literature, and, more to the point, the particular function of music to encode and preserve memory. Congo Square itself will be discussed through the travel-writing by which visitors reported on what they saw there. Next, the chapter takes up the lore around the idea of the mixed-race “seductress,” as propagated in popular fiction, that drove the rise of the red-light district in what became Storyville. This latter territory forms the basis of Michael Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter and Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia. From there, it discusses the major writing of Tremé through Tom Dent, Brenda Marie Osbey, and Albert Woodfox.
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- New OrleansA Writer's City, pp. 134 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023