The central thrust of this research documents the poorly-studied ways that communities with historical disadvantages stand up to adversity and crisis, and how they depend on cultural practices and values to achieve a sense of agency and enhance their capacity for resilience.

I came to study disaster by way of my love for the city of New Orleans. When Katrina threatened to drown the city, I quickly shifted my research there from the French Caribbean where continuities in Creole culture and Latin, slave-based histories offered a sound basis for the transition. The epic scale of devastation and profound impact on ordinary families aroused my passion to communicate the ravages on heart and soul and the social fabric of communities to the broadest possible public. I recruited a two-time Emmy-winning filmmaker to help me produce a documentary about a large, African American family from the area. We located a family of 155 people who had evacuated before the storm to a relative’s home in Dallas, and began filming there. For 20 months, including more than a year back on home ground in FEMA trailers, we tracked the group’s ordeal. The film, Still Waiting: Life After Katrina, aired on PBS stations in 2007 and was re-broadcast numerous times including summer and fall 2010 for the 5-year anniversary.

For another six years after the film release, I continued to research the family’s lurching process to recover and their inordinate difficulties to get a hearing with outsider agencies and recovery organizations due to cultural differences. The book I wrote about this years-long ordeal came out in 2015, Standing in the Need: Culture, Comfort, and Coming Home After Katrina.