PEN MEMBERS SPEAK OUT:
HURRICANE KATRINA
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In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many members of PEN American
Center have published articles voicing their opinions and reactions to
the tragedy. |
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Fatima Shaik: Masking New Orleans
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On Mardi Gras Day, the nation will be looking to New Orleans to see if we are wearing masks. We’ll be wearing them in New Orleans, but they’re being worn in Washington D.C. too. That’s because the face of our tragedy is being covered up with a big smile—we are having a party and pretending that the poor people can just go away.  |
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Fatima Shaik: Christmas in New Orleans
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When the nation emerges from its pile of gifts on Christmas morning and picks up the newspaper or moves to the television, will Americans still attend to the people of New Orleans? Or will Katrina's poor folk move back toward the invisibility where they existed for so many years? |
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Anne Rice: Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
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I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.
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PEN Members: If you have published an article or opinion piece on Hurricane Katrina that you would like to have featured on this page, please e-mail us. |
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Richard Ford: Elegy for My City
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Who can write about New Orleans now? Tell us what it's like there. Bring us near to what people are experiencing, to their loss, to what will survive. People who are close should write that. Only they're in the city, or they're on a bus, or they're seeking shelter. We don't know where they are. |
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Alice Sebold: Living With the Dead
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These tragedies, it's worth remembering, grant us an opportunity to understand what is perhaps our finest raw material: our humanity. The way we at our best treat one another. The way we listen to one another. The way we grieve. |
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Bell Gale Chevigny: A Shock to the System
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When their government turned its back on them, survivors of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake were galvanized into political action. Katrina survivors may take a similar lesson from today's disaster. |
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