88 Stories and Traditions from the Sacred City
Edited by Lee Barclay
Photography by Christopher Porché West
The eighty-eight stories and traditions in New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost are the piano keys in a love song to the city. Alongside Christopher Porché West's alluring black-and-white photographs, New Orleans' culture bearers pay tribute to the city they call home. From Storyville to the Super Bowl, from cover to cover are found Pulitzer Prize-winning writers--four of them gathered on these pages; Creole chefs; float and costume designers; a break-acrobat flipping forward over tourists lying on the pavement like matchsticks across from Jackson Square; Black Mardi Gras Indians; parade captains; musicians; protectors of the city's historic landmarks; writers of its poems and articles and novels and plays; and those who pass down traditions in the performance of New Orleans culture.
REVIEWS
How Can You Explain New Orleans?
by Jan Ramsey, offBeat -- September 1, 2010
It's not that often that I fall in love with a book, but after reading through New Orleans, What Can't Be Lost: 88 Stories and Traditions from the Sacred City, I'm raving about it . . . . It's almost impossible for any media-television show, film, poem, photograph, visual art, essay, book-to capture the essence of New Orleans, but I'd say this book comes pretty damned close. . . . If you love New Orleans and find that why you love it so is difficult for you to express in words (as I often am), then get this book, read it, and buy one for your friends.
Click here for the full review.
New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost A Must-Have Book
by Suzanne Stouse, New Orleans Times-Picayune -- August 29, 2010
Just when you're pretty sure your heart can't bear another word or picture on the subject comes a remarkable Katrina anniversary book called "New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost" - 88, count 'em, 88 - short pieces by local writers famous and not-so on the treasures no storm could take away. . . .
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Book of essays celebrates New Orleans' enduring spirit
by Chere Coen, The Daily Advertiser -- September 5, 2010
At first glance, New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost, a collection of 88 essays published by UL Press, appears to be another Hurricane Katrina retrospective or one more book celebrating how New Orleans differs from the rest of the world.
Although the unique beauty of the city comes across strong and well, New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost digs deeper into the psyche of natives by writers who live there and finds that what makes New Orleans special may not be Mardi Gras and Emeril but "makin' groceries" and yo mama and 'dem. . . .
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From the Website of The Independent Weekly: News, Culture:
Eighty percent of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population has returned. The culture never left. That's the gist of New Orleans: What Can't be Lost ($30, UL Press), a rhapsodic collection of essays, poems and fiction fragments that celebrates the Crescent City's unique, indestructible culture. The contributions -- from residents and expatriates, most of them writers by vocation -- are accompanied by as many black and white photographs spanning the '80s to the present by Christopher Porché West. From Chris Rose's raw, funny, post-K epistle to America from the city's diaspora, "Who We Are" ("...once we get around to fishing again, don't try to tell us what kind of lures work best in your waters.We're not going to listen. We're stubborn like that."). . . .
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Contributors
Jason Berry, John Biguenet, Amanda Boyden, Rick Bragg, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Olen Butler, Leah Chase, Joshua Clark, Andrei Codrescu, Lolis Eric Elie, Richard Ford, Fred J. Johnson, Jr., Errol Laborde, Ronald W. Lewis, Louis Maistros, Anders Osborne, Tom Piazza, Chris Rose, Kalamu ya Salaam, Henri Schindler, Ned Sublette, Barbara Trevigne, Christine Wiltz, Herreast J. Harrison, Sarah K. Inman, Lee Meitzen Grue, and more.
Click here for the full list of contributors.
The Editor
Proud to call New Orleans home, LEE BARCLAY lives in Faubourg St. John, down a bend of the bayou from 600-year-old oaks, pelicans, ibises, and blue herons. She is devoted to the preservation of New Orleans through community education and collaboration and the performance of New Orleans culture--in kitchens and down backstreets; through trumpets and voices; on page, stage, and sidewalk; and when any time, for any reason, a parade rolls by.
The Photographer
CHRISTOPHER PORCHÉ WEST is a photographer and artist who has been documenting the people and culture of New Orleans for over thirty years. A native Californian with Franco-European roots in Louisiana, Porché West first came to New Orleans in the late 1970s and relocated permanently to the Crescent City in 1981. He currently lives and works in one of New Orleans' oldest neighborhoods, Bywater, founded in 1809, where he continues to document and preserve the culture and life of New Orleans and its people.
Book Excerpts
From: "Everyone Has a Valve" by Poppy Z. Brite
The costume thing is important, I think, part of that "Mardi Gras mentality" other cities like to chide us for. New Orleans is an intensely Catholic city, but Catholics here seem to be more easygoing in regards to dogma than in some other places. After all, how homophobic can you be in a city where almost every man--regardless of orientation, age, or social status--has at least one dress in his closet? Of course, these gents needn't wait for Mardi Gras. Parades can crop up at any time for any reason and are taken for granted at certain times, such as after funerals. The defining characteristic of New Orleans is surely a live-and-let-live credo, a near-universal belief that as long as that fat man wearing the pirate costume and pushing the hot dog cart isn't hurting anybody, he's not crazy, he's just interesting. Let him talk. There's an old saying about true natives, whether they were born here or have made it their spiritual home: "You know you're from New Orleans if you move anywhere else and feel like you're from Oz and just moved to Kansas." In other words, every true New Orleanian has a valve. We are each and every one of us Ignatius, we diehards who have committed ourselves to this city not because we are especially brave or strong or determined to rebuild--though we may be all of these things--but simply because we have no choice in the matter.
From: "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" by Ned Sublette
You have asked me: what can't be lost?
For convenience, and because it sounds better when we sing it, let's call it Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
By which I mean the cultural continuity of New Orleans. Which is to say, the memory of the struggle.
I want to tell you about Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
The Indians, the Social and Pleasure Clubs, the Baby Dolls, the Skeletons. Tambourines and fans. Battle dances and brass bands. The manly art of sewing. $300 green shoes. Bonnets and bottles, skull and bones.
I want to tell you about Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
The collective knowledge released when the crowd shouts hey! on the three-and after the brasses play da-dat-dweeeeeeee-dat on a Sunday afternoon second line.
I want to tell you about Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
St. Louis Cemetery #1, where those wrought-iron Kongo crosses on the tombs cross not at the chest but at the center, showing us the kalunga line that separates the living from the land of the dead on the other side of the water.
I want to tell you about Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
Holt Cemetery, where Buddy Bolden's bones are buried though no one knows the exact location of his grave, and where Jessie Hill's final resting place is marked with a stone that says, "Ooh Poo Pah Doo."
I want to tell you about Ooh Poo Pah Doo.
From: "Offerings" by Simonette Berry
Every few days, the owners would put up a new message. Sometimes it was an advertisement, but most of the time it was a Bible verse or a cautionary phrase. I looked forward to that dingy little sign every day on the drive home, knowing it would appear as I came off of the I-10 overpass onto Claiborne Avenue. On an overcast afternoon in the spring of 2000, the sign read, "Free Marriages Performed for the Purchase of 1000 pieces of Chicken." It stopped me in my tracks; it was the best one they'd done all year. I decided I wasn't going to let this one get away. I pulled over under the "You Can't Beat Wagner's Meat" sign and started taking photos. This was the first time I stopped to devote my full attention to one of these ephemeral New Orleans facades, and I've chased them ever since. I am afraid to let them escape, these little mysteries of our salvation.
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Hardcover, 288 pages, ©2010
ISBN: 9781935754008 |
