Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory

by Lynnell L. Thomas

Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture—jazz, cuisine, dance—while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourism websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. She describes how, with varying degrees of success, African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourism industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations. Taking readers from the Lower Ninth Ward to the White House, Thomas highlights the ways that popular culture and public policy converge to create a mythology of racial harmony that masks a long history of racial inequality and structural inequity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Grad School

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Lynnell L. Thomas is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory.

Reviews

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book not only offers a personal insight to Tourism in New Orleans but also the effects of it to all New Orleans residents. I think this book would be fascinating to anyone from the casual reader to the history enthusiast. Thomas does not hold back on the racist policies and history of the city that has shaped the commodification of black culture.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This felt like I was reading a sociology PhD thesis, with sentences like this:

p168 The lack of foresight, poor planning, exclusionary practices, and prioritization of tourists' interests over residents' needs that characterized the post-Katrina renovation of Armstrong Park were not an aberration but a continuation of the site's contentious racial history that pitted white elites and poor and working-class black residents against one another in dealing with the uses, meanings, and memories of Louis Armstrong, the Treme neighborhood, and the racial and cultural legacy of New Orleans's civil rights movement.

Plus 39 pages of notes (most of which I read) and a 32-page bibliography.

I went into this read looking for background for cultural tourism with an emphasis on history of racial issues in New Orleans. This is not a tourism book, but good for understanding the complexity of New Orleans before and after Katrina, what the author calls "the legacy of New Orleans's history of race- and class-based oppression." (page 140)

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best monographs that breaks down concisely how the forces of both desire and disaster were constructed in the establishment and furthering of tourism and tourist attractions of New Orleans, racial disparities, and challenging the historical memory of things like the romanticization of the Old South; highly recommended

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

really thought-provoking analysis of common race-based tropes that are used to market New Orleans to tourists. definitely makes you think about the role you play as a tourist consuming these images that have disenfranchised and harmfully simplified the political and economic realities of black residents. I especially liked her discussion of the pervasive "inactivism" that accompanies the cities' catering to the wishes of outsiders and neoliberal ideals at the expense of the needs to address racial injustice locally and directly without historical distortion or obfuscation.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I plan to use several citations from this well-written book in a conference presentation my colleague will soon make at a Katrina conference. Second, I really want to go back to New Orleans. Third, I really, really want to go back to New Orleans.

[Melissa Ooten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great analysis of tourism and black cultural appropriation in NOLA. I'd been looking for something like this for some time - well done and much needed research and analysis.

[Naomi V]

because it was promoted at DePaul