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.

Rambsy argues that the widespread recent use of persona poems by African American authors makes an examination of African American poetry in the context of autobiography especially timely. In the realm of poetry, Black writers have been integral to first-person portrayals of African American lives. An analysis of persona poems in relation to book-length volumes that concentrate on individual African American historical figures creates new scholarly possibilities. Indeed, book history and print culture studies concentrate on publications produced during the nineteenth century. Conversely, an examination of persona poems by Black poets reveals the viability of studying contemporary African American book history. This chapter addresses more than forty poets and sixty volumes of poetry and individual poems forming first-person narratives. Not comprehensive but focused, this study analyzes noteworthy contributions to the production of autobiographical narratives in African American poetry.