News at Eleven: Many of the people [Natasha] Trethewey knew and

grew up with had it hard before Katrina, and in the rush to redevelopment, she worries about their stories becoming lost and their futures remaining blighted. "The casinos were among the first to rebuild and recover," she explains, "and they broadcast their message of affluence above the heads of people struggling to reconstruct their lives from remnants." Outside observers and newcomers, she fears, will only be dazzled and remain ignorant of deeper truths: "As visitors arrive-- not knowing the former culture, the architecture, or the landscape-- corporate narratives can prevail, cross-written over the small-town story." This gnawing fear fuels her determination to tell the stories she knows. "I've been given to thinking that it's my national duty, my native duty, to keep the memory of my Gulf Coast as talisman against the uncertain future," she declares.

from Mobile Press-Register: Southern Bound: Poet Trethewey recalls coast before Katrina

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