Summary Of Diary From The Dome By Paul A. Harris

For my midterm book review I chose, Diary From The Dome: Reflections on Fear and Privilege during Katrina, by Paul A. Harris. Paul Harris is currently the manager of a library information desk at the University of California, San Diego. In his book, Mr. Harris begins by recounting his first visit to New Orleans 28 years prior to Hurricane Katrina. He falls in love with the city even though he only spends a few days there. He later makes several more trips. On his fateful trip to trip to the city in August of 2005; he gets a whole lot more than he bargained for. When Mr. Harris realizes he isn’t going to be able to escape the city, he takes shelter in Superdome with thousands of other people. The conditions at first are uncomfortable, but still
bearable. After a few days of riding out the storm, the conditions inside quickly deteriorate. The author describes human feces and all other manner of nastiness build up everywhere. He describes families with small children sleeping on urine soaked cardboard. Halfway into his stay in the superdome, he joined a group of international people where they were sitting. With the national guard quickly losing control of the situation, the international group was moved out of the superdome and into the New Orleans arena; and the author joined them. The conditions in the in the arena were far superior to the superdome, and the group helped with basic medical duties. From there they were transferred to the Hyatt hotel not to far away, and eventually the group was bussed out of New Orleans. They got special treatment and were made a priority and were able to leave early; even before children and medically disabled people. He and the others were then dispersed and everyone went home. This book dealt with many complex themes including gender, race, class, and capitalism. The author had much to say when it came to these themes, and used his perspective on these issues to give glimpse into how he mentally processed his eyewitness account of Hurricane Katrina. While I find his perspective interesting I to say I hold very different opinions than him on many different issues. For starters, the theme of gender was probably his least talked about theme, but one point sticks out to me. In the chapter, Bless Taiwan, the author seems to think that the females in the group worrying about rape in the barbaric conditions and working with the males in the group to take some precautions was paranoid. He does eventually agree and goes with the plan. (Harris 39) I have to say that I think this was really insensitive of him to think they were being paranoid, when the threat was very real. In situations where civilization starts to break down, women are often the first to be targeted with violence. Not to mention rumors of rapes were running rampant throughout the superdome at the time. I don’t understand why he thought taking some preventive safety measures was paranoid. Race was a theme that dominated the inner monologue of the author during his experience.
There were several major occurrences where race played a role in his decision making or judgement of a person's behavior. When his international group was rescued early, he attributed this as being due to his group being predominantly white. (Harris 47-48) While I believe there may be some truth to that, I think it is incredibly arrogant and ungrateful for him complain about the motivations of the people who helped him. Those National Guardsmen were doing everything they could to help people and keep order. His group was lucky enough to get released early and he decided to attack the moral character of those who helped him. Interestly enough you don’t see Mr. Harris turn down the benefits of this act of racial favoritism. There were other examples of race playing a role in the story, but this is what stood out the most. Any luck the author has in the story is often attributed to racial motivations of those who are helping him, and yet he never once turns downs this supposed ill gotten aid to uphold his clearly superior sense of morality; and I think that speaks volumes about his character and how he views white people from the
south. The theme of class is spoken about many times by the author. He even put the word “Privilege” in the title. The author makes fun of Barbara Bush by saying that she doesn’t understand the plight of poor black refugees from New Orleans that she visited in Texas. (Harris 89) While this is a totally true statement, how is he in any better position to understand what they are going through. Harris himself admitted to growing up in an upper middle class home and was financially successful into adulthood. His experience with Katrina, while not fun at all, amounted long term to no more than a ruined vacation and some bad memories. He got to home to his nice house in California and write a book. Those poor black refugees from New Orleans lost everything and were in a strange place with no way to get home. There ordeal didn’t end with a bus ride like Mr. Harris’s did. It would take years for them to recover; if they ever did. While capitalism wasn’t a huge theme of his book, the author did make a few passing remarks. At one point on the way out of the city he notices that some larger stores like Wal-Mart have armed guards out front, and smaller stores do not. (Harris 87) While I agree this might be true, another explanation is that the vast supply of resources is being guarded because they plan on using them to help the citizens and thus the need to to protect the store. I dislike the way the author jumps to something being a conspiracy immediately without having any information.
After delving into how the book relates to gender, race, class, and capitalism; I’d like to give my opinion of the text as a whole. While I did find his actual story of surviving interesting and his perspective, even though it is vastly different than mine, to be an interesting test against my own beliefs; I have to say I found his attitude and opinion of people distasteful.
We have already looked at examples of how in every situation where he received help, he always questioned the motives of those helping him. This made him look completely ungrateful and pretentious. Also he made his disdain for religious people known many times throughout the book. In one situation, he calls people who are saying they would pray for him selfish. (Harris 21) Those people were being nice to him and in their mind were appealing to the highest authority to help him; God. I don’t understand why you have to be angry and try to find some ulterior motive for someone showing you some form of kindness.
Overall I would not recommend this book to anyone. While his personal story of surviving might be interesting, his personal monologue comes across as ungrateful and annoying from start to finish.