Books in the collection--newer favorites: Carry Me Home.


Carry me home, a journey back to New Orleans, by Mark Folse.

Jones Hall Louisiana Research Collection
PS3606.O467 C37 2008
multiple copies available


In the Louisiana Research Collection, it seems we might consider a book "newer" if it was published after 1899. But for the current purpose, "newer" will mean published within the last few years. Last summer, we presented a very brief selection of our Katrina-related books. Another important and very emotional contribution to the Katrina literature is made by Mark Folse in Carry Me Home, a Journey Back to New Orleans.


This is the story, in diary form, of New Orleanian Mark Folse's reaction to learning of the flood's devastation. In 2005, he lived in North Dakota. Carry Me Home describes the surprising process that he and his family went through to move back to New Orleans early in 2006. The text is largely composed of selections of his blog posts in the now-complete Wet Bank Guide, which he frantically started publishing upon learning news of the flood. The author's poignantly-dated selections are richly descriptive, and at times graphic and sorrowful. But the bottom line of the narrative is optimistic, especially in light of the continued reconstruction of neighborhoods we have witnessed through summer 2010. From the chapter "Little House On The Bayou", originally written May 2, 2006:

"New Orleans needs us, people smart enough to measure the risk and fool enough to take it. As you wonder where the hell you'll live and how to pay the new cost of living in New Orleans, as you look at your children and wonder if they'll be safe and find good schools, look in the mirror and remind yourself: it will work out because we will make it so. The place you stand today was made by fools like us. Now it's our turn."


Mr. Folse is looked up to in the New Orleans creative community, and is active in authoring several blogs, including: Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, Poems Before Breakfast, and the black flood, a creative response to disaster. He has also been involved with the production of the new HBO series, Treme.

Posted by Susanna Powers

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