Audiobook7 hours
They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
()
About this audiobook
They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans is the previously untold story of perhaps the oldest outsider settlement in America, an invisible community on the annually flooded shores of the Mississippi River. This community exists in the place between the normal high and low water line of the Mississippi River, a zone known in Louisiana as the batture.
Until now the stories of this way of life have existed only in the memories of those who have lived here. They Called Us River Rats also explores the troubled relationship between people inside the levees, the often-reviled batture folks, and the river itself. It traces the struggle between batture folks and city authorities, the commercial interests that claimed the river, and Louisiana's most powerful politicians.
Today Fry is among the senior generation of "River Rats" living in a vestigial colony of twelve "camps" on New Orleans's river batture, a fragment of a settlement that once stretched nearly six miles and numbered hundreds of homes. It is the last riparian settlement on the Lower Mississippi and a contrarian, independent life outside urban zoning, planning, and flood protection. This book is for everyone who ever felt the pull of the Mississippi River or saw its towering levees and wondered who could live on the other side.
Until now the stories of this way of life have existed only in the memories of those who have lived here. They Called Us River Rats also explores the troubled relationship between people inside the levees, the often-reviled batture folks, and the river itself. It traces the struggle between batture folks and city authorities, the commercial interests that claimed the river, and Louisiana's most powerful politicians.
Today Fry is among the senior generation of "River Rats" living in a vestigial colony of twelve "camps" on New Orleans's river batture, a fragment of a settlement that once stretched nearly six miles and numbered hundreds of homes. It is the last riparian settlement on the Lower Mississippi and a contrarian, independent life outside urban zoning, planning, and flood protection. This book is for everyone who ever felt the pull of the Mississippi River or saw its towering levees and wondered who could live on the other side.
Author
Macon Fry
Macon Fry is an author, writer, and educator. He arrived in New Orleans in 1981 to record and write about the unique culture and folkways of south Louisiana. For the past thirty years he has lived on the watery fringe of New Orleans, occupying a self-built stilt house over the Mississippi River, hidden by the huge levees that keep the city dry.
Related to They Called Us River Rats
Related audiobooks
Getting Our Breath Back Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOctober Suite Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Under a Dark Summer Sky Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born on the Bayou: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Madam: A Novel of New Orleans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taking Lottie Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Something Very Wild Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grace, Grits and Ghosts: Southern Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Every Little Scrap and Wonder: A Small-Town Childhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cotton Club Princess Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond the Bayou Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Mississippi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Departures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Voiceless Stories of Miss Ada Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Crawfish Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Underground Moon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaving Grace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Say A Prayer for Me: One Woman's Life of Faith and Triumph Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHill of Beans: Coming of Age in the Last Days of the Old South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storming Heaven: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orange Mint and Honey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Glory Unbound Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret of Gumbo Grove Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl Factory: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poverty & Homelessness For You
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fucked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Is Ohio: The Overdose Crisis and the Front Lines of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Those Who Wander: America’s Lost Street Kids Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Teaching With Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Welcome Homeless: One Man's Journey of Discovering the Meaning of Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hole in Our Gospel: The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Second Edition, with an Update a Decade Later Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Difference Do It Make?: Stories of Hope and Healing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Justice System Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for They Called Us River Rats
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
1 rating0 reviews