‘Beyond Katrina’ by Natasha Trethewey, Essay Example

Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters to hit America. The Mississippi Gulf Coast was destroyed by the hurricane, killing people, destroying property, and leaving many homeless. Life changed for many people, as they never got back the lives they had before. Businesses were not recovered, and people were driven out of their homes (Olshansky). Natasha gives the story of how they rose from the ashes, especially for his brother Joe, who was imprisoned due to the circumstances that followed the hurricane. How Joe built his life after that makes the flow of the story in Natasha’s book. This essay seeks to compare and contrast Joe’s life before and after the hurricane.

Joe was Natasha’s stepbrother, who came to live with Natasha and her grandmother when Joe’s father killed their mother. His grandmother sees the man who killed his daughter in Joe. However, they get over the differences when Joe joins his uncle’s sons’ business, where he owned and renovated shotgun houses in North Gulfport. Before the hurricane, Joe has a means of livelihood, and his business of rental property is going well. However, the storm destroys it all, and as he cannot get the loans to repair them, he has to find another means of survival. Circumstances force him to transport and deliver illegal drugs for his long-time friend (Trethewey). Before the hurricane, Joe has a legal and decent job with which he survives. After the hurricane, he works illegally, and it costs his freedom as he is imprisoned.

Before Katrina, Joe and Natasha have a good relationship, where they have memories in pictures in front of their grandmother’s house. Natasha feels like she has the responsibility of taking care of her brother, which she fails to do. Despite their good relationship before the hurricane, Joe does not tell his sister that he was imprisoned because he did not want to ruin the good moments of her life. He does much later when the lawyer warns him that if she does not testify in his favor, he will spend a long time in prison (Trethewey). She feels guilty for not taking care of him because he was seven years younger than she was. She also does not write letters to him when he was in prison, indicating the rift between them after the hurricane.

Joe knew his grandmother and left her alive before the hurricane. He has a good relationship with his relatives, and he is a good landlord, just like his grand-uncle Son. He tries to build us his construction business from the property he inherited from Son. However, the hurricane comes with his tragic imprisonment, and he attends his beloved grandmother’s funeral in an “orange overall and shackles” (Trethewey). He is also forbidden from talking from his dear family members, whom he tells that he loves from the car’s window that brought him. He is not able to spend time with them as he did before the storm.

Joe owned land, which he had inherited before the hurricane. However, after Katrina, he remains landless because of the land grabbing that existed then. When one brought down the buildings that stood on their land, the land was no longer theirs because someone else took possession of it. Funds to help the people who were affected by the hurricane were poorly handled, and this was a contributing factor to Joe losing his rental property and their grandmother’s property (Trethewey). Had they been given the funds, Joe would have been able to repair the rentals and would not have been imprisoned for cocaine transportation.

Joe’s life before the hurricane was a hope of building and acquiring wealth, to become like his renowned uncle, who was a reputable landlord and a business person. Katrina deprives him of this, as he is left homeless and without a job. These are the circumstances that push him from being a decent and honest young man to a transporter of drugs, something that changes the whole course of his life. Before the hurricane, Joe’s reputation was good but was ruined after the hurricane. Natasha attests to this when she mentions in one of the interviews that she was afraid that people would judge him for the decision he made instead of giving him sympathy (Fulton). However, the response was different as Joe got the sympathy Natasha has expected.

Natasha blames the events that happened to his brother on the hurricane and the government for mishandling the funds that were supposed to help the affected people. She notes that hadn’t happened, Joe’s life would have been different (Fulton). The author writes countless letters to the administration to allow his brother’s release to a place closer to home. After thirteen months, Joe is released and starts to build on his life, even though not the same as it was before the hurricane (Trethewey). Joe’s story reflects how the hurricane-affected the people and the role the government played in their lives after Katrina. Lives never remained the same, and the scars remain on the people’s lives for an extended period.

Work Cited

Fulton, Lorie Watkins. “Breaking the Silence: Natasha Trethewey’s” Beyond Katrina.” The Mississippi Quarterly 63.4 (2010): 727-731.

Olshansky, Robert B. “Planning after hurricane Katrina.” Journal of the American Planning Association 72.2 (2006): 147-153.

Trethewey, Natasha. Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. University of Georgia Press, 2015.