Author Archives: Simi Kang
“I have a right not to be resilient”: New Orleanians of color remember Hurricane Katrina
I moved to New Orleans in the overwhelming heat and humidity of early July for one reason: K10. Branded as such on banners, billboards, and a deluge of press kits, the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall (2015) promised to be a media circus rivaling that of the 1984 World’s Fair. For six weeks leading […]
Congressman Garret Graves and the discursive disappearance of communities of color in South Louisiana
On 10 October, 2017, Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves stood before the House Natural Resource Committee and introduced an amendment to designate Louisiana’s Cajuns as an endangered species. After making an impassioned speech about the failures of the federal government to preserve Louisiana’s coast, the tenuous future of the Mississippi River Delta, and Louisiana’s current campaign […]
Trump’s Paris Accord withdrawal and the human sacrifices of capitalist climate change
Denial of climate science is only the symptom of a much deeper problem that confronts the planet. It is the endemic crisis-ridden capitalism that lashes about like an injured dragon, breathing fire here and whipping its tail over there. Fatally wounded, capitalism seeks regeneration through any means—whether by the seizure of precious natural resources or […]
A letter to my brothers: our ancestors defied borders, and so must we
For my brothers, who know our family, but few of our stories. Dear boys, We are neither refugees nor their children. We are their grandchildren. The first time I learned the proper noun, the verb ‘Partition’, I was five. Dad nestled a plate of sliced apples between us on the couch and allowed me to […]
“They spilled on us like we weren’t there”: Louisiana’s ‘invisible’ fishing community
A Vietnamese fisherman’s wife gestures to a forefinger with her thumb, pointing to the second knuckle to indicate how small the brown shrimp are this season; “we’re not making enough for gas—we can barely pay our deckhands, let alone ourselves.” Shrimping is a difficult business even when the shrimp are large and the yields abundant. […]
The Migrationist 