The narrator opens the story questioning Columbus and his "discoveries" in the New World through a series of questions, mainly of the connotation of the word "discovery." "He, Christopher Columbus, discovers this New World. That it is new only to him, that is had a substantial existence, physical and spiritual, before he became aware of it, does not occur to him" (19). The author uses a form of braided narration to compare the naming of Columbus' "discoveries" to the naming of plants that already had names before they were renamed. On page 21 the narrator shifts into her garden in Vermont, bringing us momentarily out of the story of Christopher Columbus and her native home of Antigua (re-named after a Church that had nothing to do with the people who lived there before he "discovered" it) and where she lives--in Vermont, in her garden, contemplating these plant names. "The plants, all of them--and they were hundreds--had two names: they had a common name, that is, the name assigned to them by people for whom these plants have value; and then they have a proper name, or Latin name, and that is a name assigned to them by an agreed-on group of botanists" (23). In an effort to bring things full circle and back to the narrator, she tells us that she likes to call the plants by their common names: "I believed that it was an affectation to say 'Eupatorium' when you could say 'joe-pye weed'" (23). We are left with another series of questions to end the piece: "It makes me ask again what to call the thing that happened to me and all who look like me?" (27).
A.J. Verdelle's "70117:"
The most powerful lines of the piece are in quotation marks:
"Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" (114).
"This is where we live" (113).
"The pot is calling the kettle black" (110).
"The hospitality, in Texas, made them feel welcome; they were, you see, 'underprivileged' anyway" (109).
"Water water everywhere" (107).
"This is terror" (102).
"Where is FEMA?" (100).
"Meet the press" (99).
"Get yourself out of La-La land. Out of New York. Out of the Ferragamo store. Out of Air Force One. Tend to the black, the stranded, the hot, the hungry, the aged, the poor, the crowded, the drowning. Get thee to New Orleans, already. You're late!" (98).
"Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink" (98).
"Make levees, not war" (97).
This piece begs the reader to place him or herself in the shoes of the victims of Katrina. Forces them to ask themselves these questions. Where were you? What did you do to help? By the end of the piece Verdelle makes it obvious that it is never too late to help but to stand idly by should not be an option. She mixes in ethos with logos by putting in personal feeling with news headlines: "More than eighteen hundred dead from heat, floods, dehydration and neglect" (99).
In one section she asks the reader to question whether or not they are a part of the collective "We" that she puts into play: "We have been psychically burned by centuries of legalized callous treatment, by tens of scores of years of orchestrated abuse and neglect" (101). Everyone wants to be a part of the collective we. The privileged think they make the "we" up entirely. But this sentence begs you, the reader, to ask yourself, "Are you a part of this 'we'?" Most of us will answer no. Will realize this essay is directed at us to change, to do something.
The piece ends on a hopeful note that this story has reached us, speaks to us all to do something, to act. "HEADLINE: Swamps regenerate" (114).
Nice, Celine. The sublimating the true inhabitants of a place seems to be the job of colonialism where they own things that nature provided, not just was was brought. It's has a weird cruelness
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