Michael E. Crutcher, Jr. - TREMÉ
Never before has the mystery and glory of Faubourg Tremé been brought together in one volume. For the knowledgeable insider, Michael Crutcher’s research conquers familiar myths with facts, and elevates other myths to the status of verifiable truth. For those students who are unfamiliar with this unique American neighborhood, Crutcher makes a cogent argument in clear prose for why this place is worthy of attention, study, and celebration.
—Lolis Eric Elie, writer for the television program Treme
Just in time for the launch of the second season of the HBO show, Treme, you are invited to join us for a presentation and book signing with Michael Crutcher featuring his new book, TREMÉ, which explores the historical links between where the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood is located and its vibrant culture.
Across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood is arguably the most important location for African American culture in New Orleans. Closely associated with traditional jazz and “second line” parading, Tremé is now the setting for an eponymous television series created by David Simon (best known for his work on The Wire).
Michael Crutcher argues that Tremé’s story is essentially spatial—a story of how neighborhood boundaries are drawn and take on meaning and of how places within neighborhoods are made and unmade by people and politics. Tremé has long been sealed off from more prominent parts of the city, originally by the fortified walls that gave Rampart Street its name, and so has become a refuge for less powerful New Orleanians. This notion of Tremé as a safe haven—the flipside of its reputation as a “neglected” place—has been essential to its role as a cultural incubator, Crutcher argues, from the antebellum slave dances in Congo Square to jazz pickup sessions at Joe’s Cozy Corner.
Tremé takes up a wide range of issues in urban life, including highway construction, gentrification, and the role of public architecture in sustaining collective memory. Equally sensitive both to black-white relations and to differences within the African American community, it is a vivid evocation of one of America’s most distinctive places.
Click here to listen to the podcast of Fred Kasten's recent interview with Michael Crutcher as broadcast on WWNO's The Sound of Books.
Michael E. Crutcher Jr. is assistant professor of geography at the University of Kentucky.
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: University of Georgia Press, 12/2010
- Street:
- 513 Octavia St
- City:
- New Orleans ,
- Province:
- Louisiana
- Postal Code:
- 70115-2055
- Country:
- United States
