Alison Saar | Breach
Sept. 17–Dec. 17, 2016
Alison Saar explores issues of gender, race, racism, and the
African diaspora. She mines mythology, ritual, history, music,
and her biracial heritage as sources for her work.
During a 2013 residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in
New Orleans, Saar was dismayed to see how little had been
done to rebuild African American communities devastated
by Hurricane Katrina eight years earlier. Upon her return
to Los Angeles, she began researching the histories of
American floods and the effect on African Americans. The
Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, described as one of
the worst natural river disasters in U.S. history, piqued her
interest. Heavy rains resulted in the river breaching levees,
creating a historic catastrophe that had a profound impact on
the life of African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta.
The flood exposed the conditions of poor African American
sharecroppers and tenant farmers and their relationship with
cotton plantation owners. The flood also resulted in social,
cultural, federal policy, and political changes.
With water imagery woven throughout, Breach is the
culmination of Saar’s creative research on American rivers and
their historical relationship to the lives of African Americans.
Through mixed media sculpture, paintings, and works on
paper, she explores floods not only as natural phenomena; but
also the complex interaction of social, cultural, and political
factors associated with flooding and its aftermath.
galleries.lafayette.edu [email protected] 610 330 5361
1.
Breach, 2016
wood, ceiling tin, found trunks, washtubs and misc objects
155 x 60 x 51 in. (393.7 x 152.4 x 129.5 cm)
(Inv# AlS16-15) $ 95,000
3 parts:
1) Figure: 72 x 22 x 18 in.
2) Trunks Nest
3) Raft: 4 x 36 x 41 in.
Left
2.
Silttown Shimmy, 2016
wood, ceiling tin, enamel paint, tar and silt
28 x 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (71.1 x 21.6 x 14 cm)
(Inv# AlS16-14)
Right
3.
Black Bottom Stomp, 2016
wood, acrylics, ceiling tin, silt, tar and wax
30 x 9 x 7 in. (76.2 x 22.9 x 17.8 cm)
Inv# AlS16-34)
Left
4: Painting
Staunch, 2016
Charcoal, call and acrylics on found
seed sacks, & linens.
64 x 27 Inches
Right:
5. Painting
Breach, 2016
Charcoal, chalk and acrylic on found seed
sacks and linens
65 x 30 inches
Left:
6. Painting
Sluefoot Slag, 2015
acrylic, gesso and charcoal on found sugar
sacks and linens
53 x 26 1/2 in. (134.6 x 67.3 cm)
Right:
7. Painting
MuddyWater Mambo, 2015
acrylic, gesso and charcoal on found and dyed
denim, sugar sacks and linens
50 x 25 in. (127 x 63.5 cm)
Left:
8: Painting
Swampside Shag, 2015
acrylic, gesso and charcoal on found and
indigo-dyed denim, sugar sacks and linens
48 x 27 in. (121.9 x 68.6 cm)
Right:
9: Painting
Backwater Boogie, 2015
acrylic, gesso and charcoal on found indigo-dyed
sugar sacks and linens
50 x 27 in. (127 x 68.6 cm)
10.
Drawing on found -trunk drawer
Acheron, 2016
Charcoal and chalk on found trunk drawer and sugar sacks
29.5 x 16 x 4 in. (74.9 x 40.6 x 10.2 cm) (Inv# AlS16-23)
11.
Drawing on found -trunk drawer
Silted Brow, 2016
charcoal, chalk & acrylic on linen and found trunk
drawer
17 x 27 x 3 in. (43.2 x 68.6 x 7.6 cm) (Inv# AlS16-36)
12
Mixed media installation
Hades D.W.P., II, 2016
with poems by Samiya Bashir, Acheron, Phlegethetha, Lethe, Styx, and Cocytus
etched glass jars, water, dye, wood, cloth and ink transfer, electronics, found ladles and cups
30 x 50 x 16 in. (76.2 x 127 x 40.6 cm)
Note: D.W.P. is the Department of Water and Power in Los Angeles
13.
print
Deluge, 2016
Woodcut on hand dyed paper
23 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (59.7 x 36.8 cm), Tandem Press
Framed Dimensions: 26 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (67.6 x 45.1 x 3.8 cm) Edition
of 30 (Inv# AlS16-24)
14.
print
Backwater Blues, 2014
Woodcut and chine colle
27-3/8 x 14-3/8 in. (69.5 x 36.5 cm)
Tandem Press
framed: 30 3/8 x 17 3/8 in. (77.2 x 44.1 cm)
Inv# AlS14-4)
Alison Saar-Breach, 2016
crate sizes from Los Angeles to PA
US Art shuttle service
Crate 71.000 Crate 12.000 Crate 42.000 Crate 36.000 Bin Box 28.000 Bin Box 28.000 51.000 98.000 48.000 78.000 48.000 48.000 47.000
8.000
24.000
28.000
24.000
24.000
Total Cubic Feet : 217
One additional box might be added, approx 24 x 30 x 30
Artist’s book
During spring 2016 Alison Saar and poet Evie Shockley collaborated on an artists’ book at Lafayette’s Experimental
Printmaking Institute, E.P.I. See photos of work in progress below and following page. Saar will complete the edition
during her September 2016 residency
15.
Artist’s book, collaboration between Alison Saar and poet
Evie Schockley
mami wata (or, how to know a goddess
when you see one), 2016
Consists of 20/20 Box editions
5/5 artist proof sets
each in a unique found box with
3 poems—one on cloth, one two-part and sewn, one
folded and tied—3 woodcuts, and a colophon (digital
print)
4. Distressed cigar box (found object), Lethe
serigraph on plexiglas, overall size varies based
on cigar box dimensions
Interior of case
Serigraph, distressed
stained fabric, collograph, hand sewn
(print coming out
of the mouth) 26
inches long; part II
poem
Etching, serigraph, distressed ink stained rice paper(Kinwashi), hand sewn edge; part I of poem: etching, 2-part print, sewn at top; rolled; approx 18 inches
x 7-3/4 inches
Etching, serigraph, embossed letter press text,
(Rives BFK) cotton rag paper; part III of poem,
etched and embossed with letterpress; folded
and tied with hand dyed cotton
15. Artist’s book, collaboration between Alison Saar and poet Evie Shockley, produced at EPI
mami wata (or, how to know
a goddess when you see one)
i. a deity’s history
if you show your tail
i’ll spank it, the mamas
would say to the daughters
meaning keep your behind
behind you, meaning assbackwards is the wrong
direction. later, this threatened
showing called up negro chaps
in paris, uniformed, fighting
wwii-era stereotypes. now tails
speak of grown-ass women
who catch the secrets of fish,
whose bare blue breasts hint
at the source of their power
stirring beneath the water.
ii. mami speaks
you make me
with wood and the fear
sharpened knife’s
edge. you make
me with paint
and awe. you carve
me with snakes,
spotted and diamondbacked, you wrap
me in their tails
or give me my own.
you make me
a ritual figure: i am
the second story
of your masks.
you make me
with fabric and fiber
with pigment,
braid and thread. you
make me with
myth, fantasy,
and affection. you make
me with dreads
and dread. you shape
me from copper,
cut me from patterned
tin. you make me
with borrowed
cultures, with local
need. you make
me your tormentor
and deliverer: i am
the demon-goddess
of your home’s floral
and perfumed altar,
i am the irresistible
thief, who flashes
and fills your eyes
with my full breasts
before i rob you
blind. you make me
powerful as tides,
with rushing
rivers
of hair, you
flood me with mystery
and desire, so—no wonder—
i do what you have given me to do.
iii. migrant’s prayer
is that you, mami, wrapped in that soft
white fleece, casting that cold, hard glance
in all directions? is that your spray swirling,
stinging, in the bitter wind, your blue bosom
glittering with diamonds thick as ice floes?
i recognize your excess in this, your muscle,
but miss the wildness of your free: rushing
mirror-gray green golden muddy into every
crevice, trailing delta silt in cool deadly
fingers as long as your nom de guerre—mississippi—over every surface, swallowing
what you will. miss. fear. yearn to possess.
Evie Shockley
January 24, 2016
5 a,b,c. Digital pigment prints on dissolvable
paper
Installation views of Silt, Soot and Smut
Silt, Soot and Smut at L. A. Louver, Venice, Calif., May 25 - 1 Jul 2016, was a larger version
of the exhibition Breach, Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College.
http://www.lalouver.com/exhibition.cfm?tExhibition_id=1206
review in LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-knight-saar-review-20160614-snapstory.html
review in Bermudez Project
http://www.bermudezprojects.com/silt-soot-smut/
Installation view of Silt, Soot and Smut at L. A. Louver, Venice, Calif., May 25 - 1 Jul 2016, a larger version of the
exhibition Breach at Lafayette College. The mixed media sculpture, Breach can be seen in center.
Installation view of Silt, Soot and Smut at L. A. Louver, Venice, Calif., May 25 - 1 Jul 2016, a larger version of the
exhibition Breach at Lafayette College. The sculpture Silttown Shimmy can be seen on pedestal at left; a different
version of Hades D.W.P. is to the right.
Installation view of Silt, Soot and Smut at L. A. Louver, Venice, Calif., May 25 - 1 Jul 2016, a larger version of the
exhibition Breach at Lafayette College. Paintings on found fabric
Interdisciplinary opportunities
• Early twentieth century African American history
• The Great Northern Migration
• Civil engineering: such as the pre-1928 Army Corps of Engineers levees-only policy; dams and
other means of “controlling” rivers
• FEMA; flood insurance; buyback programs,
• Climate change and future flooding events
• Bushkill Creek; Delaware River and other regional floods, for example, Susquehanna River and
Hurricane Agnes, 1972
• Environmental justice, environmental racism
• Engineering ethics
• Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy
• Music: Delta Blues musicians responded to the flood of 1927 with an estimated 50 songs
including Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” (1927), Charley Patton‘s “High Water Everywhere,
Part 1” (1929), Lonnie Johnson’s “Broken Levee Blues” and 1929’s “When the Levee Breaks,” by
Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. (A song also covered by Led Zeppelin in 1971 and
Dylan.)
• 50th anniversary of devastating the Arno River flood in Florence November 3 & 4, 2016; “Mud
Angels”
• The floods and/or rivers in religious traditions; floods as cleansing; floods as destructive events;
baptisms; rivers as symbols; rivers as boundaries
• Theater productions or readings, such as Gilgamesh
• Economics of sharecropper-based agriculture
• Poetry, including Evie Shockley’s collaboration with Alison Saar on an artists’ book created at EPI
• Literature
• Film and documentaries
• Mami Wata
The Coast and Geodetic Survey was directed to map the
history of the great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. (Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, RG 23)
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001
Telephone: 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-627
http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/publications/prologue/2007/spring/images/coastmiss-flood-l.jpg&c=/publications/prologue/2007/spring/
images/coast-miss-flood.caption.html
Brief summary of the Flood of 1927
An excellent summary of the history of the flood, the social changes,
etc., can be found in the Weather Channel’s series “When Weather
Changed History,” The Great Flood of 1927 & The Treatment of
Blacks. https://youtu.be/hgPPTQPPM9c
•
•
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927The flood inundated 16 million
acres of land across Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Seventeen
million acres—27,000 square miles, or an area that spanned 99 miles
long and 50 miles wide—were underwater, some areas under 30
feet. In many areas of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, flood
waters remained until July of that year. One million Americans were
directly affected; hundreds of thousands were displaced.
The flood exposed the conditions of poor African American
sharecroppers and tenant farmers and their relationship with cotton
plantation owners. An estimated 200,000 African Americans were
displaced by the flood and lived for long periods of time in relief
camps. There was racial disparity in how relief aid was distributed.
Seventy-five percent of the population of the Delta was African
American, and 95 percent of agricultural workers were African
Americans. Planters feared that if laborers were evacuated from the
region, they would not return, resulting in a labor shortage.
Among the consequences of the flood:
•
•
Many African American men were impressed into service and
were never paid. Many would subsequently leave, joining the
Great Migration.
African Americans shifted from the Republican Party—the party
of Lincoln—to the Democratic Party, a consequence of broken
promises by Herbert Hoover. Racial abuses during the flood
eventually cost Hoover the support of national black leader
Robert Moton, who had been in charge of investigating racial
abuses in relief camps.
•
•
Americans begin to reconsider the view on government
responsibilities for providing relief. After 1927, the federal
government agreed to provide relief following natural disasters.
The floods undermined the faith in and underscored the failure
of the Army Corps of Engineers’ levees-only system—described
by Gifford Pinchot, chief of the forest service under President
Theodore Roosevelt as “the most colossal blunder in engineering
history”—and resulted in a revised Flood Control program in
1928. In 1917, the Army Corps of Engineers commenced a “levees
only” project to control the Mississippi River, the 10-year plan to
build 40-foot-high, 100-foot wide levees running a length of 1,000
miles on both sides of the river. In August 1926, heavy rain began,
lasting eight months. The river ran at record levels. On Jan. 7,
1927, a 49-foot flood crest passed Cairo, Ill.; levees were the only
protection. Hundreds worked around the clock to reinforce the
levees with sandbags. The Army Corps of Engineers assured that
the levees would hold, but they did not. The first levees failed in
Illinois, and approximately 120 failed before the flooding ended.
On April 21, 1927, the main stem was 9.5 feet above flood stage. At
Mound Landing, a section of the levee collapsed.
A significant change in flood management policy was made. The
1928 Flood Control Act led to additional measures to reduce stress
on levees with floodways, reservoirs, and strengthened levees.
Blues musicians wrote more than 50 songs about the devastation
caused by the levee breaks. Examples include Bessie Smith’s
“Backwater Blues,” Lonnie Johnson’s “Backwater Blues,” and
Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie’s ‘When the Levee Breaks.”
See resources pages for sources.
The Army Corp of Engineers
In 1917, the Army Corp of Engineers established the “levees only”
policy, to control the Mississippi River, a ten-year project to build
forty-foot-high one-hundred-foot wide levees running a length of
one thousand miles on both sides of the river.
In August 1926, heavy rain began, lasting eight months. The river
ran at record levels. On January 7, 1927, a forty-nine-foot flood crest
passed Cairo, Illinois; levees were the only protections. Hundreds
worked around the clock to reinforce the levees with sandbags. The
Army Corp of Engineers assured that the levees would hold, but
that didn’t prove to be the case: The first levees failed in Illinois, and
approximately one hundred twenty failed before the flooding ended.
April 21, 1927, the main stem was nine and a half feet above flood
stage. At Mound Landing, a section of the levee collapsed.
The floods undermined the faith in and underscored the failure
of the Army Corp of Engineers’ levee-only system–described by
Gifford Pinchot, chief of the forest service under President Theodore
Roosevelt as, “the most colossal blunder in engineering history,”
and the revised Flood Control program in 1928 lead to additional
measures to reduce stress on levees with floodways, reservoirs, and
strengthened levees.
See resources pages for sources
The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 Frontispiece - beginning of
crevasse breaching levee at Mounds Landing, Miss. From: “The Floods
of 1927 in the Mississippi Basin”, Frankenfeld, H.C., 1927 Monthly
Weather Review Supplement No. 29
Image ID: wea00733, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS)
Collection
Photographer: Archival Photography by Steve Nicklas, NOS,
NGS. Public Domain
wea00740
The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927
Arkansas City, Arkansas on April 27, 1927
The river stage was at 52.8 feet From:
“The Floods of 1927 in the Mississippi
Basin”, Frankenfeld, H.C., 1927 Monthly
Weather Review Supplement No. 29.
Photographer: Archival Photography by
Steve Nicklas, NOS, NGS.
public domain
Barge loaded with poor African American refugees on the Sunflower River in Mississippi during the 1927 Flood.
Relief officials did not evacuate African Americans out of the flood areas in fear of losing plantation workers,
whowould have little incentive to return to low wage cotton field work.
File size: 1800 x 1224 px | 6 x 4.1 inches (150dpi) | 6.3 MB,
Image ID: CWBPTX
Contributor: Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo
Model release: NoProperty release: No Check if you need a release, Alamy.com, licensing fee for use.
1927 Flood & Mississippi River
resources, by no means complete.
An excellent summary of the flood of 1927, the impact on Southern African
Americans, the social and political changes, the levee system, etc., can be
found in the Weather Channel’s series “When Weather Changed History,”
The Great Flood of 1927 & The Treatment of Blacks. https://youtu.be/
hgPPTQPPM9c.
History
John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it
Changed America (Simon & Schuster: 1998),
Richard M. Mizelle, Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 and
the African American Imagination, (University of Minnesota Press: 2014).
From the publisher:
The Mississippi River flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood
in U.S. history, reshaping the social and cultural landscape as well as the
physical environment. Often remembered as an event that altered flood
control policy and elevated the stature of powerful politicians, Richard
M. Mizelle Jr. examines the place of the flood within African American
cultural memory and the profound ways it influenced migration patterns
in the United States.
In Backwater Blues, Mizelle analyzes the disaster through the lenses of
race and charity, blues music, and mobility and labor. The book’s title
comes from Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” perhaps the best-known
song about the flood. Mizelle notes that the devastation produced the
richest groundswell of blues recordings following any environmental
catastrophe in U.S. history, with more than fifty songs evoking the
disruptive force of the flood and the precariousness of the levees
originally constructed to protect citizens. Backwater Blues reveals larger
relationships between social and environmental history. According to
Mizelle, musicians, Harlem Renaissance artists, fraternal organizations,
and Creole migrants all shared a sense of vulnerability in the face of both
the Mississippi River and a white supremacist society. As a result, the
Mississippi flood of 1927 was not just an environmental crisis but a racial
event.
Challenging long-standing ideas of African American environmental
complacency, Mizelle offers insights into the broader dynamics of human
interactions with nature as well as ways in which nature is mediated
through the social and political dynamics of race. Includes discography.
Backwater Blues was reviewed in the Journal of Environmental Studies
and Sciences, Sept 2015, Vol 5, issue 3, 491–92. http://link.springer.com/
article/10.1007/s13412-015-0287-z
PBS documentary: Fatal Flood http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
americanexperience/films/flood/
In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi
River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, inundating
hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a
million homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river
pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic plantation
family, the Percys, and the Percys against themselves. A dramatic story of
greed, power and race during one of America’s greatest natural disasters.
Susan Scott Parrish, The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History , (Princeton
Univ Press, forthcoming Dec 2016)
from publisher:
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which covered nearly thirty
thousand square miles across seven states, was the most destructive river
flood in U.S. history. Due to the speed of new media and the slow progress
of the flood, this was the first environmental disaster to be experienced on
a mass scale. As it moved from north to south down an environmentally
and technologically altered valley, inundating plantations and displacing
nearly a million people, the flood provoked an intense and lasting cultural
response. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts,
political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how
this event took on public meanings.
Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a “great
relief machine,” but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty
federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of
African American evacuees in “concentration camps” prompted pundits
like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells to warn of the return of slavery to
Dixie. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood “the
most colossal blunder in civilized history.” Susan Scott Parrish examines
how these and other key figures--from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller &
Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and
Richard Wright--shaped public awareness and collective memory of the
event.
The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts
are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 enables us to
assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern
consciousness.
Parrish is Professor in the Department of English Language and
Literature and the Program in the Environment at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural
History in the Colonial British Atlantic World.
Christopher Morris, The Big Muddy. An Environmental History of the
Mississippi and its Peoples. From Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012) Morris is a historian at
University of Texas, Austin.
Christine A. Klein & Sandra B. Zellmer, Mississippi River Tragedies
A Century of Unnatural Disasters (NY: NYU Press, 2014) Both authors
teach at law schools. Includes a chapter on environmental justice and
environmental justice
John McPhee, The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar. Straus and Giroux,
1989). First section recount the role of the Army Corp of Engineers in
“controlling” the lower Mississippi River.
Richard Hornbeck and Suresh Naidu, “When the Levee Breaks: Black
Migration an Economic Development of the American South,” 2013,
examines the impact of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 on black
out-migration and subsequent agricultural development in the lower
Mississippi region.
Keith Wailoo (Editor), Karen M. O’Neill (Editor), Jeffrey Dowd (Editor),
Roland Anglin (Editor), Keith Wailoo (Introduction by), Karen M. O’Neill
(Introduction by), Jeffrey Dowd (Introduction by) Katrina’s Imprint. Race
and Vulnerability in America. (Rutgers University Press, 2010)
Mike Swinford, “When the Levee Breaks: Race Relations and
The Mississippi Flood of 1927. 2007 http://www.eiu.edu/historia/
Historia2008Swinford.pdf
John M Barry, “The Great 1927 Mississippi River Flood,”
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/roaring-twenties/essays/great1927-mississippi-river-flood
http://www.oralhistory.org/2013/06/25/oral-history-on-backstory-voicesfrom-the-1927-mississippi-river-flood/
http://backstoryradio.org/shows/that-lawlessstream/?segments=remembering-the-rising-tide
Charles C. Eldredge, John Steuart Curry’s Hoover and the Flood. Painting
Modern History (University of North Carolina Press, 1927)
Poetry and literature
Susan Scott Parrish, “Faulkner and the outer weather of 1927, “American
Literary History Volume 24, Issue 1, p. 34-58
Jay Watson, Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality of
Southern Fiction, 1893-1985, The New Southern Studies, (University of
Georgia Press, 2012)
Poet Evie Shockley (at Rutgers) has written about and is a collaborated with
Saar on the EPI produced artist’s book
Shockley, on teaching Sterling Brown’s poem, “Ma Rainey,” students
listen to a Bessie Smith recording of “Backwater Blues,” Boston Review,
January 14, 2016; http://bostonreview.net/poetry/evie-shockley-teacherfeature-ma-raineys-blues
Camille T. Dungy, editor, Black Nature, Four Centuries of African
American Nature Poetry. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009) The
natural world seen through the eyes of black poets. http://www.ugapress.
org/index.php/books/black_nature
“Just as nature is too often defined as wilderness when, in fact, nature
is everywhere we are, our nature poetry is too often defined by AngloAmerican perspectives, even though poets of all backgrounds write about
the living world…Dungy enlarges our understanding of the nexus between
nature and culture, and introduces a ‘new way of thinking about nature
writing and writing by black Americans.'” —Booklist (starred review)
Richard Wright, “The Man Who Saw the Flood,” New Masses 24, 1937
(short story); and “Down by the Riverside,” in a collection of short stories,
Uncle Tom’s Children
Natasha Trethewey, Beyond Katrina, A Meditation on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast, (Athens, Ga., University of Georgia Press, 2010)
S. McMillin, The Meaning of Rivers: Flow and Reflection in American
Literature American Land and Life Series, (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 2011) McMillin is in the department of English at Oberlin
Sterling Brown, “Children of the Mississippi,” 1931, from Southern Road,
1932, poem
Bill Cheng, Southern Cross the Dog (Ecco, 2014), novel
Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, The Tilted World (Morrow: 2013),
novel
Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, “What His Hands Were Waiting
For,” short story, ca. 2010.
William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a
Planter’s Son, with 1973 introduction by Walker Percy, (originally published
Knopf: 1941) later editions have a 1973 introduction by Walker Percy, memoir
William Faulkner, The Old Man, 1939, novella
Robert Penn Warren, Flood: A Novel, 1963
Michael Farris Smith, Rivers: A Novel, Simon & Schuster: 2013
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes are Watching God, 1937, novel
Ross Gay and Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., River, Monster House Press, 2014,
chatbook
Graphic Novels
J.G. Jones and Mark Waid, Strange Fruit, in four volumes, 2015 & 21016
From publisher:
Two of the industry’s most respected and prolific creators come together
for the first time in a deeply personal passion project. J.G. Jones (52,
Wanted, Y: The Last Man) and Mark Waid (Irredeemable, Superman:
Birthright, Kingdom Come) take on a powerful, beautifully painted
story set during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Strange Fruit is a
challenging, provocative examination of the heroic myth confronting the
themes of racism, cultural legacy, and human nature through a literary
lens, John Steinbeck’s classic novel, Of Mice and Men.
It’s 1927 in the town of Chatterlee, Mississippi, drowned by heavy rains.
The Mississippi River is rising, threatening to break open not only the
levees, but also the racial and social divisions of this former plantation
town. A fiery messenger from the skies heralds the appearance of a
being, one that will rip open the tensions in Chatterlee. Savior, or threat?
It depends on where you stand. All the while, the waters are still rapidly
rising.
http://www.boom-studios.com/strange-fruit-01-j-g-jones-cover.html
Mat Johnson (author) and Simone Gane, Illustrator, Dark Rain: A New
Orleans Story, (Vertigo: 2010)
In the days after Hurricane Katrina, two men who fell through society’s
cracks travel to evacuate New Orleans to pull off the bank heist of a
lifetime. Up against the clock and eluding armed competitors, the men
find themselves in the middle of one of the greatest humanitarian
disasters in American history. All around them, the institutions that
form the pillars of our society are falling apart. Surrounded by death and
misery, the men face a moral challenge greater than any other obstacle
they’ve had to overcome. Is it possible to beat the system, even when it
lies in ruins? Can they save even one person–or themselves? Or will those
institutions come crashing down right on top of them?
Josh Neufeld, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, written and illustrated
by Neufeld (Pantheon: 2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/books/24neufeld.html
Neufeld known for his graphic narratives of political and social upheaval,
told through the voices of witnesses. He is the writer/artist of the
bestselling nonfiction graphic novel A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
(Pantheon).
African American history/material culture
Henry John Drewal, Mami Wata: Arts for Water Sprits in Africa and its
Africa Diasporas. (University of Washington Press: 2008)
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of
America’s Great Migration (Random House, 2010)
Music
Blues musicians responded to the flood of 1927 with at least two dozen
songs including Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” (1927), Charley Patton‘s
“High Water Everywhere, Part 1” (1929), Lonnie Johnson’s “Broken Levee
Blues” and 1929’s “When the Levee Breaks,” by Memphis Minnie and
Kansas Joe McCoy. (A song also covered by Led Zeppelin in 1971 and
Dylan.)
See extensive discography in Mizelle Jr’s Backwater Blues, The Mississippi
Flood of 1927 and the African American Imagination, p 191-192
David Evans, on the origin of Bessie Smith’s song, “Backwater Blues,”
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2004/02/nashville-flood-the-origin-of-bessiesmith-hit-scholar-reveals-david-evans-makes-revelation-during-blues-classat-vanderbilt-59762/
David Evans, “High Water Everywhere. Blues and Gospel Commentary
on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood,” Nobody Knows Where the Blues
Come From. Lyrics and History. Edited by Robert Springer, (Jackson, Miss.:
University Press of Mississippi, 2006)
DoVeanna S. Fulton Minor, “Come Through the Water, Come Through the
Flood” Black Women’s Gospel Practices and Social Critique,” http://moses.
creighton.edu/jrs/2011/2011-42.pdf
Abstract
This article explores gospel music created by Black women as a form of
protest that critiques social injustice. Using the tragic circumstances the
1927 Mississippi River Flood, the author argues that in the first half of the
twentieth century the emergent gospel music became a vehicle through
which African American women could circumvent the restrictive gender
dictates of Black churches. In music created immediately following the
flood and years later, Black women challenged the rhetoric and practice of
hegemony through an alternative oral discourse that recognized the whole
self as integral to spiritual and subjective fulfillment, and simultaneously
critically assessed their cultural milieu
Tim A. Ryan, Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner’s Fiction and Southern
Roots Music, LSU Press, 2015
“Flood Songs, Dylan and The Mississippi Blues,” http://raritanquarterly.
rutgers.edu/node/7342
American Routes, Nick Spitzer host, Wade in the Water: Songs and Stories
of the River: http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/746/wade-in-thewater-songs-and-stories-of-the-river
American Routes, After the Storm, takes you in story and song to New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Nick
blends music and commentary that describes the place of storms and
floods in the history and culture of the city and region. Featured are classic
blues about broken levees and broken hearts, celebratory jazz funerals and
memories of the city in song. Artists include Louis Armstrong, Mahalia
Jackson, Fats Domino and Randy Newman, others. http://americanroutes.
wwno.org/archives/show/139/
http://www.library.olemiss.edu/guides/archives_subject_guide/1927-flood/
publications
Article from the Wall Street Journal “When Bad Times Make Good Art”
which is a more general description of the Delta Blues and the 1927 flood
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122973726066823379
NPR story: Singing the Blues about 1927’s Delta Floods
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4860785
NPR story: When The Levee Breaks: Ripples Of The Great Flood
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136427246/when-the-levee-breaks-ripples-ofthe-great-flood
Documentaries
The Great Flood by Bill Morrison and Bill Frisell about the 1927 flood,
the documentary consists of archival film footage and photographs, is
presented without narration with captions inserted occasionally
Trailer https://vimeo.com/86573792
reviews: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/coming-terms-oneamericas-greatest-natural-disasters-180953044/?no-ist
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/movies/the-great-flood-explorestragedy-on-the-mississippi-in-27.html?hpw&rref=movies&_r=0
her life and the lives of the people around her with a series of Super 8 home
movies. Between her return to New Orleans in 2001 and her first visit
back to her devastated neighborhood in October 2005, she shot fortytwo 50 foot Super 8 reels, totaling approximately 80 minutes of running
time. Film labs refused to handle Hill’s flood damaged home movies so
she hand-cleaned the films with soap and water, halting their decay. Hill’s
Super 8 images are poignant evidence of unseen neighborhoods and local
culture lost in the hurricane.
Hill was an independent filmmaker, teacher, and animator. She is well
known for her extraordinary use of drawings, paintings, photographs, cutout paper and three dimensional cloth puppets. Her techniques expanded
to include hand-processed film, found film footage, her own home movies
and camera-less animation as well as traditional animation.
http://www.nywift.org/article.aspx?ID=3207
Peter Hutton. Study of a River, 1997 , experimental film, winter on Hudson
River
Pare Lorentz, The River, 1938, short documentary, about importance of
Mississippi River
Caroline Bacle, Lost Rivers, 2012
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/
american-refugees-bill-morrison-s-great-flood
Spike Lee: When the Levees Broke
Spike Lee: If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, 2010
“The Johnston Flood,” 1989, Academy Award for best documentary short
subject
Helen HIll’s Home Movies (2000-05)
These are home movies Helen Hill made of her neighborhood in New
Orleans a year before Hurricane Katrina hit. Preservation of these personal
films is a memorial to a unique city and to Hill’s work and life. An awardwinning filmmaker, animator and teacher, Hill consistently documented
Films
Wild River, 1960. director Elia Kazan, (Tennessee Valley)
Beasts of the Southern Wild, 2012, director Ben Zeitlin
The Great Flood
A film by Bill Morrison
Music by Bill Frisell
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American
history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its earthen embankments in 145
places and inundated 27,000 square miles. Part of its legacy was the forced exodus
of displaced sharecroppers, who left plantation life and migrated to Northern cities,
adapting to an industrial society with its own set of challenges.
Musically, the Great Migration fueled the evolution of acoustic blues to electric blues
bands that thrived in cities like Memphis, Detroit and Chicago becoming the wellspring for R&B and rock as well as developing jazz styles.
THE GREAT FLOOD is a collaboration between filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill
Morrison and guitarist and composer Bill Frisell inspired by the 1927 catastrophe.
In the spring of 2011, as the Mississippi River was again flooding to levels not seen
since 1927, Frisell, Morrison, and the band traveled together from New Orleans,
through Vicksburg, Clarksdale, Memphis, Davenport, Iowa, St. Louis and on up to
Chicago.
80 minutes / b&w
Release: 2013
Copyright: 2013
Sale/Institutional: $298
African American Studies, American Studies, Black & White,
Cinema Studies, Communications, Economic Sociology,
Environment, Film History, Geography, History (U.S.), Media
Studies, Race and Racism
http://icarusfilms.com/new2013/fld.html
For the film, Morrison scoured film archives, including the Fox Movietone Newsfilm
Library and the National archives, for footage of the Mississippi River Flood. All film
documenting this catastrophe was shot on volatile nitrate stock, and what footage
remains is pock marked and partially deteriorated. The degraded filmstock figures
prominently in Morrison's aesthetic with distorted images suggesting different planes
of reality in the story-those lived, dreamt, or remembered.
For the score, Frisell has drawn upon his wide musical palette informed by elements
of American roots music, but refracted through his uniquely evocative approach that
highlights essential qualities of his thematic focus. Playing guitar, Frisell is joined by
Tony Scherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums and Ron Miles on trumpet.
In THE GREAT FLOOD, the bubbles and washes of decaying footage is associated
with the destructive force of rising water, the filmstock seeming to have been bathed
in the same water as the images depicted on it. These layers of visual information,
paired with Frisell's music, become contemporary again. We see the images through a
prism of history, but one that dances with the sound of modern music.
http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.
html?fisk
THE ALLUVIAL VALLEY
OF THE LOWER
MISSISSIPPI RIVER
Harold Fisk, 1944
For the Army Corps of Engineers, Fisk’s maps
of the historical traces of the Mississippi
River; fifteen maps, stretching from southern
Illinois to southern Louisiana.
"Birdsong Camp at Cleveland, Miss. 4-29-27" African-American flood refugees stand in line at Birdsong Camp. Tents in background.
Collection: 1927 Flood Photograph Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Call Number: PI/1992.0002
System ID: 97135., Birdsong Camp at Cleveland, Miss., 4-29-27
Scanned as tiff in 2008/01/03 by MDAH.
Credit: Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History