Events
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Start: 2:00 pm
End: 4:00 pm
Join us for a when celebrated graphic storyteller Josh Neufeld returns to Octavia Books to sign the paper back release of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.
Now in paperback, The New York Times
best-selling graphic nonfiction masterpiece depicting the lives of
seven New Orleanians before, during, and just after Hurricane Katrina.
Best
American Comics, 2010
Mother Jones Top Books of 2009
Daily Beast
Recommends
New York Best Comics of 2009, Runner Up
MTV.com Best
Nonfiction Comic of 2009
San Francisco Chronicle “Best in Comics”
A.D.:
New Orleans After the Deluge is a masterful portrait of a city
under siege. Cartoonist Josh Neufeld depicts seven extraordinary true
stories of survival in the days leading up to and following Hurricane
Katrina.
Here we meet Denise, a counselor and social worker, and
a sixth-generation New Orleanian; “The Doctor,” a proud fixture of the
French Quarter; Abbas and Darnell, two friends who face the storm from
Abbas’ s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor's son just entering his
senior year of high school; and the young couple Leo and Michelle, who
both grew up in the city. Each is forced to confront the same wrenching
decision–whether to stay or to flee.
As beautiful as it is
poignant, A.D. presents a city in chaos and shines a bright,
profoundly human light on the tragedies and triumphs that took place
within it.
Shortly after Hurricane
Katrina hit, JOSH NEUFELD spent three weeks as an American Red
Cross volunteer in Biloxi, Mississippi. He is a longtime artist for
Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and his art has been exhibited
in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe. He lives in
Brooklyn, New York.
Neufeld's images of New Orleans and New Orleanians are powerful and
immediate . . . It's that kind of painstaking detail that makes "A.D."
such a moving book -- real people, real stories, told with sympathy and
smarts, giving it an immediate place among the Katrina classics.
Neufeld's comic style–larger than life at times, but always human in
scale–is perfect for these stories of survival and endurance.
–The
Times Picayune
Start: 4:00 pm
End: 8:00 pm
Come to a block party to celebrate ONE BLOCK: A New Orleans Neiborhood Rebuilds (Photographs by Dave Anderson, Essay by Chris Rose) with the folks who lived through it and made it all happen on 500 Block of Caffin Street in Holy Cross in the Lower Nine.
There will be performances by Rebirth Brass Band and Little Freddie King, a photography exhibition by One Block residents and local artists Chaundra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, and special guests. And of course, there will be a booksigning and Octavia Books will have copies of ONE BLOCK at the event available for purchse.
One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds (Aperture, August 2010), photographs by Dave Anderson, essay by Chris Rose, is a powerful portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans as seen through the prism of a single city block whose residents are attempting to rebuild their homes. Using portraiture and still lifes, Anderson explores the very nature of community while testing its resilience. The block party, which takes place on the block where Anderson made the photographs, will mark the fifth anniversary of Katrina and celebrate the resiliency of this block and community.
Anderson’s compassionate treatment of the neighborhood’s difficult circumstances has drawn comparisons to the work of Dorothea Lange and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina and the current housing crisis, the stability and permanence of the American home is once again in jeopardy.
One Block reflects Anderson’s affection for New Orleans and his fascination with the power of human resilience – both individually and collectively.
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