Zeitoun Book Response

 


After learning about New Orleans in class I wanted to see Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of a citizen from New Orleans, to know what exactly they went through. As I continue reading I continue to learn more about Zeitoun and his wife Kathy, allowing me to see how their relation is as well. Zeitoun is a hard working man who owns his family own electrician company, and works with his wife Kathy who is receptionist and manager. Zeitoun and his family are Muslim, and while reading I have seen some challenges because they are a minority in their community. Often Kathy is asked to take of her hijab, ‘“Now you can take that think off.’ she’d been a Muslim for fifteen years and they still said this to her” (Zeitoun 67). I thought that this was a unique story because New Orleans has a diverse community, and yet people felt as if they minority, or less than others. It was interest to see how Zeitoun’s family reacted to the reports about Hurricane Katrina. Zeitoun and his family, “Lived nowhere near any levees, so they wouldn’t get any of the flash flooding that might hit some of other neighborhoods. It was East New Orleans, or the Lower Ninth, with its one-story houses so close to the levees, that were in the gravest danger” (Zeitoun 63). Learning about Hurricane Katrina in school, showed me that no matter where you were living when Katrina hit it affected you. Katrina left families dead, displaced, and mentally disturbed all over New Orleans, and people are still suffering to the day. So far I’m enjoying the book, and would recommend it to other who are interested in Hurricane Katrina.