Synopses & Reviews
Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleansand#39;s many tourists cultivate a desire for black cultureandmdash;jazz, cuisine, danceandmdash;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.
Review
andquot;New Orleans is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Lynnell L. Thomasand#39;s book should be required reading for all visitors to the city. It is a powerful, much-needed critique of how the tourism industry romanticizes the cityand#39;s history of slavery and race relations.and#160; It is also an important account of how African Americans have struggled to create a place within the industry for themselves and their history.andquot;
and#160;
Review
andquot;This highly original book fills a significant gap in the literature on New Orleans and on tourism in general by offering a rare look at African American tourism within the dominant (white) tourism narrative.
Desire and Disaster in New Orleans will be vital reading for scholars working on New Orleans and those examining representations of African Americans in modern American culture. It is filled with astute analyses based on Lynnell L. Thomasand#39;s impressive interpretations of sources ranging from websites to interviews.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Thomas contends that the dominant heritage narrative subtly but pervasively interprets emancipation and desegregation as diminishing this culture and cultivating a postandndash;civil rights urban environment beset by poverty, crime, immorality, educational failure, and political corruption. and#160;Applying this thesis, Thomas analyzes how desire and disaster influenced media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and steered the cityandrsquo;s efforts to recover from that disaster by rekindling the familiar heritage narrative. and#160;Both provocative and compelling, this work should stimulate additional scholarship. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In this crisply written account, Lynnell Thomas provides a fascinating exploration of tourism in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrinaandhellip;. 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.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;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.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;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 Orleansand#39;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 and#160;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.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Looking at competing representations of race in New Orleans tourism, Lynnell L. Thomas shows how declarations of racial harmony mask the cityand#39;s history of racial inequality, how popular notions of New Orleans as a site of desire are intertwined with competing ideas of the city as a source of disaster, and how African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourist industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations.
About the Author
Lynnell L. Thomas is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. The City I Used to Come to Visit: Heritage Tourism and Racialized Disaster in New Orleans 1
2. Life the Way It Used to Be in the Old South: The Construction of Black Desire in New Orleansand#39;s Post-Civil Rights Tourism Narrative 27
3. Urbane, Educated, and Well-To-Do Free Blacks: The Challenge of a Creole World in Le Monde Crandeacute;ole French Quarter Courtyard Tours 53
4. Wasnand#39;t Northing Like That: New Orleansand#39;s Black Heritage Tourism and Counternarratives of Resistance 92
5. Starting All Over Again: Post-Katrina Tourism and the Reconstruction of Race 127
Epilogue 158
Notes 175
Bibliography 215
Index 249