Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Article - Carried Away - in Obit Magazine

Sunday is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in the Gulf region.  I was a fledging MFA student, a middle aged colored lady going back to school to focus on the one thing I loved but hadn't been able to give myself over to, my writing.  I had obligations you know.  Community organizing, ill and elderly parents, responsibilities that seemed to require my attention before I could attend to my literary life.

So you can imagine my frustration when Katrina hit, when those images of people on rooftops came streaming through.  I wanted to go there, to help.  School again seemed so meaningless. But I stayed at Sarah Lawrence College and began writing about Hurricane Katrina and the dispossession of my people in general.

The very first thing I wrote at SLC, Carried Away, is featured in today's edition of Obit Magazine.  

My classmates wondered if I wrote about any thing other than death and despair. I laughed.  But you can imagine my pleasure to be associated with Obit Magazine where death is a normal part of life.

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Come back in the next few days as I reflect back on Katrina/Rita and meet folks fighting to protect the environment from extractive industries, climate change and general neglect.