Why New Orleans Matters
Tom Piazza
Regan Books/HarperCollins
Hardcover; 192 pages
ISBN: 0061124834
2005
Why New Orleans Matters is Tom Piazza’s ode to, and lament for, his adopted home. All the sights, sounds, smells, history, and people of New Orleans are imparted in this post-Katrina book. From the introduction:
New Orleans is not just a list of attractions or restaurants or ceremonies, no matter how sublime and subtle. New Orleans is the interaction among all those things, and countless more. It gains its character from the spirit that is summoned in the midst of all these elements, and which comes, ultimately, from the people who live there …
Piazza moved to New Orleans in 1994 and has explored it extensively, getting to know its out-of-the-way restaurants and clubs, its diverse neighborhoods, most of all its people—the people who over the generations created the culture that is totally unique to any other US cities.
The people, he argues convincingly, must not be left out as the city slowly regains life. The people are the city.
Piazza’s knowledge of New Orleans is stunning. You can practically taste the muffuletta from Central Grocery, the shrimp and oyster dishes at the late lamented Uglesich’s, or the taste of a Pimm’s Cup at the Napoleon House, or a steak at the Port of Call as you read Piazza’s descriptions.
And you can practically hear the music, the brass band blaring out of the wide open doors at Tipitina’s Uptown, or Ellis Marsalis’ piano bewitching the hushed crowd at Snug Harbor. There is even an entire chapter on Jazz Fest, the annual springtime extravaganza that I prefer to Mardi Gras.
This book doesn’t gloss over the city’s problems. Piazza discusses New Orleans grinding poverty, crime, drugs, corruption, and open racism. The people of New Orleans “have given love and beauty to the world, a precious spiritual resilience in the form of music, cuisine and spirit that is recognized around the world,” he writes.
The second half of the book starts with Piazza returning to the waterlogged city and the utter devastation he found. It’s painful to read. At points I had to set down the book as tears welded up in my eyes.
Of course there is plenty of blame to go around, as we all know, and the author doesn’t hammer at the usual suspects so much as he skewers them with humor—especially those who thoughtlessly dismiss the storm’s most vulnerable victims as barely worth worrying about. He sees Mayor Nagin as well-meaning but ineffectual and cries out for bold new leadership. He almost doesn’t mention Bush.
The book ends with Piazza’s prescription for rebuilding the city, not as a nightmare vision of Jazzworld, an Atlantic City of the South, a caricature of its former self. It’s the people, all of them, who made New Orleans the great, welcoming, beloved town it was (and will be again I hope), and the people, all of them, must be welcomed back to a place with hurricane-proof levees, good jobs in the hospitality industry or at an expanded port, and affordable housing built to last.
“Maybe next year, or the year after,” he tells his readers, “we will pass one another on Mardi Gras Day, with the sound of a parade in the distance, or a gang of Indians (Mardi Gras Indians that is) coming down the street, and we can stop and give thanks once again for this beautiful day, this life, this beautiful city, New Orleans.”
This is a wonderful book that should be read by anyone that cares about the future of New Orleans. I pray that our leaders in Louisiana and Washington, D.C. will listen.
