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
2 - St. Claude Avenue – Hard Times and Good Children
The Lower 9th Ward – Desire – St. Roch – Bywater
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
The literary history of the St. Claude corridor, an historically hardscrabble, working-class neighborhood downriver from the French Quarter, reflects its distance from the relatively elite and glamorous Quarter. After sketching the history of the built environment and its major cultural and political flashpoints, from Fats Domino and Ruby Bridges to the Black Panthers and Hurricane Katrina, the chapter considers first the major writing to have originated in the Lower 9th Ward (Marcus B. Christian, Kalamu Ya Salaam), then the Desire neighborhood (Cheekie Nero, Jed Horne), St. Roch (Alice Dunbar-Nelson), and Bywater (Tennessee Williams, Nelson Algren, Seth Morgan, Valerie Martin). Much of this writing can be read through the motif of children, particularly faith in their innocence as a key to a more prosperous future.
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- Information
- New OrleansA Writer's City, pp. 66 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023