The Neighborhood Story Project is a collaborative partnership between John McDonogh Senior High, the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans and the University of New Orleans. It is currently comprised of five books on various neighborhoods in the city that were originally published in June 2005. The authors were all students at John McDonogh who went though a year-long creative writing course. Professional writers, poets, playwrights, photographers and publishers were invited as guest instructors. The idea was to allow young people from the city to write about the New Orleans they knew and loved; to give a voice to their vision of home. This was a unique idea because, as project co-founder Abram Himelstein explained in an interview with the Associated Press, “John Kennedy Toole is one of my favorite writers, but he’s not someone who means a lot to the kids I teach. This is all about having other voices.�?

In the aftermath of Katrina, the project’s books have taken on a much greater and deeper meaning then anyone could have imagined. After being saved from oblivion by Soft Skull Press, they serve now almost as modern time capsules, as pictures and stories about places that were washed away when the levees broke and still remain damaged and destroyed. If you want to know more about the scenes that riveted the nation in September 2005, then these are the books that will show you better than any others. The Neighborhood Story Project began as a chance to explore homes and communities, but in the wake of Katrina, it has become a witness to all our nation has lost. It is now the loudest ringing voice of truth that the largely forgotten portions of New Orleans can claim as honestly, and completely, their own.

Reviewed here: The Combination by Ashley Nelson
Soft Skull Press 2005
ISBN 1-933368-28-4
120 pages

Ashley Nelson grew up in the Sixth Ward and her book, The Combination, is about growing up there in the Lafitte Project. Initially she planned to write only about the neighborhood, but quickly discovered that she had to include her own family history in order tell an honest story. This was particularly difficult as Nelson’s mother fought a battle against drug addiction for several years and then was killed by cancer in early 2001. So, in writing about the Sixth Ward, Nelson also had to write about her mother and her own struggles growing up. None of that was easy for her, but it makes for incredibly compelling reading and certainly lends an air of authenticity to the book. The Combination is not just a photo album or a description of parties and fun in the Mardi Gras spirit; it is about one girl and the people and place that she desperately cares about. It’s about Ashley Nelson, and by the time you are finished reading about her life, you will know just why the Sixth Ward, and places like it, matter so very much.

The first thing a reader needs to know, and the most important thing, according to Nelson, is that neighborhoods are vital to the people of New Orleans. “The neighborhood is the most important thing when you are from New Orleans; we identify by the wards. New Orleans is pretty big but everybody knows everybody. It’s just a very community-oriented place, and that’s what makes it special,�? she said in a recent phone interview. In the Sixth Ward, Nelson lives in the Lafitte Public Housing Development, or the Lafitte Project. For people outside of New Orleans, the definition of “project�? can be confusing. The buildings are owned and operated by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), but the people who live within them are not destitute or desperate. One of the worst things to come out of the Katrina coverage was the misconception that everyone in the wards was indigent or criminal. Nelson goes a long way towards dispelling this inaccuracy with her interviews. One series of discussions in particular, with the members of the Lafitte Residential Council, is very revealing. The council is charged with making sure that HANO does its job, keeps things working in the buildings and cleans the surrounding areas. But more importantly, as Nelson writes, “We in Lafitte know them most for being the voice of our neighborhood.�? The council members hold classes at the Sojourner Truth Community Center (a place they were responsible for building) and hold community meetings with residents. They are living proof of how hard the people in Lafitte work to make their neighborhood a safe and vital place in the larger community. But sadly, their efforts don’t seem to be recognized nearly enough.

One of the images that has stayed with me from Katrina is the antagonistic exchanges between the New Orleans police and the people who were trying to get out. From Nelson’s book, it is easy to understand why so many people from the Sixth Ward do not look to law enforcement as allies. (And in subsequent reading, I discovered the same is true in the Ninth Ward.) In an interview with her Uncle Michelle, who works at Avondale Shipyards, Nelson is able to explain to outsiders just how difficult it can be to simply live in Lafitte. Michelle, who grew up in the Desire Housing Projects and has no criminal record, has had his own difficulties over the years with the police. As he explains to his niece:

“I’m walkin down the street one day. Police came through and everybody scattered. I’m 46 years old, Negro male, city of New Orleans, with no police convictions or anything, so I didn’t move. They threw me on the car and totally harassed me. They ran checks on me from New Orleans all the way to Westwego. Then upon, when I got off the vehicle, he told me like this, ‘Get off my MF car.’ Because there was no warrant on me. They could not get me for trespassing. I looked at it, I even went through it. I said ‘How many times you seen me in this neighborhood, and you’d ask me what I’m doing here. You know me.’ ‘No, I don’t know you.’ It don’t do no good to try and argue. Don’t do you no good to try to tell ‘em something, because now you’re setting yourself up for whatever charge they want to give you. The most prevalent charge is called ‘criminal trespassing.'"

With criminal trespassing, police officers can arrest anyone who does not live in the neighborhood, merely for being in an area that is not their own. For example, if you live in the Ninth Ward and you’re visiting friends in the Sixth, sitting on their front porch having a conversation, the police can tell you, as Michelle explains, “You’ve gotta leave. Even though you’re my guest. And they will arrest you if you don’t. And you get the charge of criminal trespassing. It’s not a good feeling.�?

Nelson explained to me that the criminal trespassing charge is used primarily to control the lives of the people living in Lafitte. “A lot of people hang out in the projects,�? she said, “but [the police] don’t like you coming there if you’re from somewhere else. They want everyone to stay in their own neighborhood. Mostly, they think they’re better than us.�?

And that is the problem, trying to live in your neighborhood, a place that is struggling with some very real crime problems, but finding yourself at odds with the police for the slightest of reasons. “They think they are better,�? said Nelson, and I realized that is what everyone thought when they watched the floodwaters rising. We must be better than those people, we must be smarter at least, or more capable. We must be somehow different because we would never be in that situation, we would never live in that kind of place, we would never get caught in this kind of disaster.

It wouldn’t happen to us, so let’s blame the people for living there and getting trapped. Let’s blame them for even living at all.

“The people in Lafitte have good jobs,�? said Nelson, “nurses, office workers, dental hygienists. They are mostly working people. I love the neighborhood, and the people and I think that if we could own our places, if the city could change things so people were owning their property, then that would make a big different. That would change a lot.�?

You certainly couldn’t be arrested for visiting someone who owned the house you were standing in, that’s for sure. If nothing else, the police would have to find a better way of getting along with the people in the Sixth Ward and maybe that would transform all of them, on both sides of the issue, in ways they never imagined.

The Combination is about a lot of people and places in the Sixth Ward, some of which are still suffering after Katrina. Dooky Chase’s restaurant is still closed, as is the Oasis Barber Shop. But Southern Scrap is open for business and so is the Busy Bee Store. There are signs of life in the neighborhood. And Ashley Nelson is back, even though most of her family elected to stay in Houston. Nelson couldn’t stand it there. “You have to drive everywhere,�? she said, “and the traffic is horrible.�? As someone who has lived in a suburb all of her life, I could sympathize with her description. It must seem alien coming from a city like New Orleans and having to navigate Houston’s sprawl. She couldn’t stay in Houston, and decided to go home at the first chance, back to the Sixth Ward back to the places she knows best.

“My Dad stayed in Houston,�? she said. “They all think it’s better there.�? But not Nelson. As she puts it, “It’s one thing to be broke in your hometown and a whole other thing to be broke in a place you don’t know.�? So she’s back in the Sixth finishing up high school and still writing. She plans to continue on to college although she’s not sure where — before the storm she wanted to leave New Orleans for school but now she’s no longer sure.

“I missed the community feeling of New Orleans too much,�? she told me, and after reading her book I can certainly understand that. The Combination is all about how unforgettable and important a place like the Sixth Ward can be for the people who lived there. If you’re wondering why they stayed, why so many people are fighting so hard to go back, then all the answers are in this book. It is because the Sixth Ward is home and even though it isn’t perfect, the people who live there are working on it. They love their neighborhood and they want to keep working on saving it.

It’s not so hard to understand now, is it? In fact, after reading Nelson’s book, they don’t seem too different from anyone else after all.