Katrina Part 1 Analysis

Abe Louise Young, a social justice activist and poet writes the article “The Voices of Hurricane Katrina, Part 1” to detail her experiences dealing with other poets being unethical when telling the stories of survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Young launched Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History and Memory Project shortly after the hurricane hit. Her goal was to help victims of the hurricane whose image in the media was tarnished and were portrayed as criminals. Abe Young uses another poet, Raymond McDaniel, as an example of a poet who uses victim’s stories and words in an unethical manner. Raymond McDaniel wrote the book Saltwater Empire, in his book, McDaniel’s uses personal histories of six African- American Hurricane Katrina survivors without consent from the victim’s. In response to McDaniel’s ethics, Young states, “It’s highly unethical to use individual narratives in an anonymous and interchangeable way, especially given this context. To bring it down to concrete reality, when a person loses their loved ones, home, pets, and belongings as well as the city of their birth, control of their
Young uses both logical and emotional appeals to substantiate her views of the media portraying survivor’s stories for entertainment purposes as opposed to real-life traumatic events. Defending the survivors and using a logical appeal to readers, Young claims, “Yet poetry of witness requires ethical rigor, careful editing, and ongoing stewardship of the personal stories of living people because it’s quite easy to “do something” destructive, too. The stories aren’t just stories; they are evolving life-or-death truth. People’s memories move, their stance shifts, and the stories they tell are intricately bound up with personal survival. For that reason, the primary storytellers must be involved in shaping the public presentation of the work.” (Young