What if your entire world was wiped
away in less than a day? Precious memories, loved ones, irreplaceable knick knacks,
photos and cherished antiques that all piece together who you are. What if all
of that was simply washed cleared from existence like a minuscule computer file
moved to the trash bin. These are only a few questions Josh Neufeld answers
toward the end of his chilling graphic nonfiction, A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge.
The lives of millions were touched
as a result of the devastating storm, hurricane Katrina. However, Neufeld eloquently
hones in on the lives of a handful of diverse people and groups who reported to
him their actual experiences before, during, and after the havoc. While the
first half of the book focused on the preceding events of the storm, the second
half centers around the storm itself and the shocking aftermath. The ability of
the reader to connect to the traumatizing experiences of the characters is most
clearly due to Neufeld’s use of distressing diction and accurate facial
expressions to match the severity and suffering in the situation at hand.
One of the most catastrophic things
about hurricane Katrina was the aftermath and the toll it took on Americans
still trapped in New Orleans. For many, it was a long time before rescue ever
came, during that waiting period, people were trapped in a disease, death and
crime ridden city. Josh Neufeld is able to accurately depict this tragic
situation through both visualization and text. When one of the main characters,
Denise, is shown at the extremely crowded New Orleans convention center after
the storm, the reader is able to connect to her pain and suffering. In a flood
of stressed, underfed, seemingly abandoned people, Denise screams out, “They
bring us here with no power. No sanitation, no food, no medicine – and they can’t
even give us water? It’s like some kinda sick joke!” It is here that Neufeld
shows Denise embodying the minds and bodies of so many others is distress after
hurricane Katrina. He represents her face is a jagged mix of horror and anger,
astonished at how any government, any country, especially America, could leave
its citizens stranded in such a way. Sweat is shown beating down her brow, Her
mouth is wide open to yell, eyes narrow, nose scrunched, and hands raised in
the air as if she if speaking boldly directly to her government. Neufeld does
an excellent job, not just by reporting the actually events, but also by
letting the reader put themselves in the characters shoes. He adds so much
emotion to the story through this that the reader can’t help but feel a certain
degree of the pain and loathing that Denise does herself.
Josh Neufeld’s ability to connect
the reader to the lives of people who actually experienced hurricane Katrina
makes this novel an absolute hit with a clearly achieved purpose of
representing the accounts of others during this event. His reoccurring use of distress
highlighting anguish and visual representation of the same emotions accurately represent
the horrendous events and make for a story readers are forced to relate to in
some way.
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