This forum is for all of
those--along with family members, friends, supporters, and sympathizers--who
experienced dislocation(s) following the 2005 triad of Gulf Coast
hurricanes, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
Founded at the 5th anniversary
of the New Orleans’ levee disaster and fully aware of the continuing
displacements and diasporas caused by the 2010 blow-out of the DeepWater
Horizon Rig with its ensuing and seemingly never-ending oil-spew-earth-hemorrhage,
by the Mississippi River flooding that required the opening of the
Morganza and Bonnet Carre spillways in 2011, and by those from the
record-breaking tornado season of this same year, this site offers
one foothold in the survival and healing walks of the peoples of New
Orleans, southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
We believe the diaspora extends to—and through—all Gulf
Coast states, from Texas to Florida, and through the ten states that
border the Mississippi, the fourth longest/tenth largest river in
the world. We also believe it embraces any and all of the people along
the river’s approximately 2300 mile path and its watershed basins
(in thirty-one states between the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountains)
who are striving both to find and to support healing and community
in this new era.
Although the term is widely
and variously used, "diaspora" has come to encompass the
literatures, the people and places, and the very consciousness itself
of dislocation, displacement, dislodgement, and disorder. New Orleans
has always been a site of diasporic journeys, and these most recent
phenomena both compound and alter earlier dislocations and regroupings
that created the city's unique character. Scholar Steven Vertovec
noted that diasporic peoples seek both roots and routes (DIASPORA
7.2) His pun is particularly compelling when one considers the city's
history. It was settled by both voluntary (chosen) and involuntary
(enforced) immigrations. New Orleans has large populations of peoples
with ancestries from Africa, Europe, Asia, and both North and South
America. As a trade hub for the continent, New Orleans has always
been a city of comingled, conflicted, confusing, and, ultimately creative
roots and routes. This double-ness in identity is an important aspect
of diasporic peoples in the past, today, and for our future.
Our name, NOLA DIASPORA,
embraces the positive metaphor of movement and of scattering and sowing
seeds for new growth, while still acknowledging and honoring the burdens
and hardships of dislocation and transformation. The future, like
the acronym NOLA, is truly all encompassing: it is a definiendum that
is recognized and understood, but also immeasurable and boundless,
simultaneously complete and generative, consummate and evolving. This
site hopes to help create a viable and plentiful future where words
and works, thoughts and actions, expectation and opportunity, unite.
NOLA DIASPORA encourages
open discussions and honest engagement. We locate ourselves at the
intersection of intellect, heart, and spirit, welcoming critical,
creative, and hybrid submissions in both standard text and multi-media
forms.
