Reviewed here: Before & After N. Dorgenois by Ebony Bodling
Soft Skull Press 2005
ISBN 1-933368-31-4
75 pages

One of the things that struck me while reading the Neighborhood Story Project books was how strongly the writers and their friends identified with their neighborhoods. Ebony Bolding addressed this relationship head-on with her book, Before & After N. Dorgenois. Until the age of 10, Bolding lived near the center of the Sixth Ward, but after her family moved to N. Dorgenois, she found herself near the neighborhood’s boundary. Many of the people on her block did not identify themselves at all with the Sixth Ward, something that both confused and disappointed Bolding. Her research provides a fresh perspective on the wards, however, and a look at the middle-class residents that surround John McDonogh Senior High School. One thing she learned, and very effectively conveys to readers, is that “there are all sorts of ways people look at my part of town.”

One of the unique things about N. Dorgenois is the diversity of the buildings. There were apartments, duplexes and houses for rent, and also homeowners, a church and a high school. This drew all sorts of residents, from a young doctor and his wife transplanted from the Maryland suburbs (and on their way back) to people buying homes and refurbishing them for profit. Some of them felt that the street was dangerous while others discounted rumors of violence. Bolding asked them all basically the same questions, but could not pin down a consensus as to what kind of place N. Dorgenois was. It was almost as if each person was seeing the street from their individual perspective and could not view it any other way. There was no cohesive opinion, no universal feeling about the block that the other books in the project seemed so easily to provide. In many ways, though, this makes it the street that will be most familiar to other Americans; we are largely a nation of suburbs after all, and N. Dorgenois seems more like that way of life than anything else.

For the young people on the street, though, this lack of identity grates a little hard. Bolding’s brother and several of his friends formed a club, the “Bayou Road Boys,” (not at all to be confused with an urban street gang) and spent a lot of time hanging out on nearby Bayou Road and happily calling at the girls as they walked by. The Boys suffered several run-ins with the police while standing around, something they talked to Bolding about at length during a group interview. They also talked about the difference between “bad hustles” and “good hustles” and explained how they felt wrong choices were often forced on people.

Ebony — What’s you definition of a bad hustla and a good hustla?

Brandon: And we have the worst police — the crookedest police officers — the First District. Most corrupt district in New Orleans and we got the most corrupt police force in the United States!

Later Bolding asks one of the Boys what his dreams were. He said:

“Dreams? Everybody just hoping they get up on their feet; make some money and get up out tha hood. You gotta stay hood, but make some money, get a nice crib, nice girl, nice car. Be straight. That’s all it’s about. That’s the American Dream.”

Just down the road on N. Dorgenois, Bolding interviews several people who are living the dream that seems unattainable to the teenagers. Tim Jackson works at a hotel and owns a fourplex, living in one unit and renting out the others. Thelma Sanders is retired; Arthe Ivory works for Public Storage; and Cory Parker, who buys the house Bolding’s mother had been renting, works in the film industry. All of them are happy on N. Dorgenois and interested in making the neighborhood a quiet and safe street. Although they are aware of nearby violence — a student was killed at John Mac in 2003 — the street is giving all of them a good life. For Ebony Bolding, though, it was just a little too removed from the rest of the Sixth Ward, and she wasn’t the slightest bit sad to leave it behind.

As she was working on her book, the rent was raised in their house and Bolding’s mother decided to move. They ended up in an apartment in a sixplex on Dumaine Street, still in the Sixth Ward. It’s a good move for Bolding, as she puts it: “Dumaine is more like a neighborhood that has DJs and lots of parties. Your neighbors won’t say ‘Oh that’s too loud, turn that down.’” It presents an opportunity for her to reconnect with the ward, something that N. Dorgenois seemed to lack in a city of close-knit neighborhoods. The family is happy and soon enough her project is done. She walks away from N. Dorgenois without a backward glance and starts her new life in a place “for anyone who likes to sit outside and have fun.”

Ebony Bolding’s book is a quiet little look at what goes on in the minds of a dozen different people living on a typical New Orleans street. She does not dismiss the potential of violence on the street, or the struggle to fit in between old residents and new. But the whole time I was reading the book, I kept thinking that Bolding was wishing she was someplace else, that her story could have been set in another place. I hope she found what she was looking for on Dumaine Street; I hope it gives her the sense of home that N. Dorgenois was lacking.

And I really hope someone teaches the Bayou Road Boys how to dream a little bigger. It might make a difference when they have to make a choice between a good and bad hustle.