Travelogue
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Whitney Plantation
… After visiting Congo Square, exploring West African instrument exhibits in the New Orleans Jazz Museum, and working our way through a city that takes its history of slavery seriously in its continuous expressions of syncretic culture, our international students were conceptually primed for the culminating experience of a slave plantation tour. But there is no way to be primed for the reality-in-place of US-American slavery, preserved to evoke a visceral scope of tragedy that should be unfathomable. There is no way to be primed for the legacies we are living through now, our unique brand of inherited structural racism that permeates every facet of life in the United States. …
Alligator is Delicious
New Orleans cuisine might be among the most storied in North America. In addition to the ubiquitous gator (like most unfamiliar meats, it really does taste like chicken), the beignets, chicory coffee, Po’ Boys, fried chicken, and Voodoo Spices packaged for tourists did not disappoint. We also sampled Vietnamese food in the international district, and made a pilgrimage to Jacques Imo, where we learned about and tasted the region’s Cajun history. …
Jazz, Voodoo, and Storied Streets
Ted Gioia, in The History of Jazz, discusses the complex history of music in New Orleans against the backdrop of cultural collisions and syntheses, multiple musical lineages, and a city of tenuous celebration against all odds …
Manifest Destiny
Rural New Mexico must be a strange landing place for international students whose vision of the United States is often captured by the New York City skyline and other bustling urban landscapes. …