Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture-jazz, cuisine, dance-while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourism websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. She describes how, with varying degrees of success, African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourism industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations. Taking readers from the Lower Ninth Ward to the White House, Thomas highlights the ways that popular culture and public policy converge to create a mythology of racial harmony that masks a long history of racial inequality and structural inequity.

About the Author
Lynnell L. Thomas is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.


Reviews
"Thomas contends that the dominant heritage narrative subtly but pervasively interprets emancipation and desegregation as diminishing this culture and cultivating a post-civil rights urban environment beset by poverty, crime, immorality, educational failure, and political corruption. Applying this thesis, Thomas analyzes how desire and disaster influenced media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and steered the city's efforts to recover from that disaster by rekindling the familiar heritage narrative. Both provocative and compelling, this work should stimulate additional scholarship. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." -- B. M. Banta * Choice *
"In this crisply written account, Lynnell Thomas provides a fascinating exploration of tourism in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.... Desire and Disaster in New Orleans will be of great interest to specialists of New Orleans and Louisiana history, but those who plan to visit or have taken private company tours of the city will also enjoy it." -- Julien Vernet * Canadian Journal of History *
"This is a well-researched, opportune, and useful niche study of the neo-colonial tourism industry and the profound effects it can have on both a micro and macro scale." -- Aoife M. Dempsey * U.S. Studies Online *
"By pushing for the necessary, non-fetishized inclusion of African American representation in the tourism narratives of New Orleans as a force fueling the culture and society itself, Thomas challenges the reader to revise misconceptions of New Orleans's past as well as to authentically frame the post-Katrina future. This rejection of a post-racial, neoliberal understanding of race and class in New Orleans by questioning the ways blackness is codified and consumed through a dominant legacy of tourism is a refreshing and crucial argument to be made not only in New Orleans, but also with an eye to the global urban tourism industry." -- Stephanie Hankinson * The Black Scholar *
"Desire & Disaster in New Orleans is an innovative, incisive critique of the racialisation of New Orleans' tourism industry and, furthermore, an important appeal as to why this issue continues to have a lasting impact on the lives of the people of New Orleans." -- Tom Lennon * 49th Parallel *
"Thomas's Desire and Disaster in New Orleans challenges urban planners and boosters to mine the past in search of complex and inclusive narratives that will prove compelling to any visitor seeking to understand New Orleans." -- Juliette Landphair * Journal of American History *
"Thomas has crafted a fascinating and well-written book that will be useful for courses not only in heritage tourism and public memory, but also in African American history, American studies, and urban history." -- Ella Howard * Journal of Southern History *
"Thomas builds a broad historical narrative of New Orleans racialised tourist economy, which, among many other benefits, is illuminative in regards to the wildly distorted stories of violence and chaos that were reported during the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans. Thomas offers a richly told and detailed history of the way the city's tourist image has framed and delimited black citizenship, an invaluable context for the ways in which African-Americans were portrayed during the catastrophe." -- Arin Keeble * Comparative American Studies *
"A strong work that will appeal not only to New Orleanians but also to those who are interested in how public memory and public policy inform each other to rectify and challenge the status quo." -- Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook * Library Journal *
"A compelling look at the inherent racism in the tourism industry in New Orleans." -- Abel A. Bartley * Journal of African American History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822357285
Author Lynnell L. Thomas
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 386g