ABOUT THE BOOK

Nine Times 10th Anniversary Parade & Poster Project

One Book, One New Orleans

8th Annual Second Line Parade, November 2006

Nine Times Members read from Coming Out the Door on NPR’s All Things Considered

Nine Times and the NSP on WWOZ Beat on the Street

This book, like the Neighborhood Story Project itself, has many beginnings.

THE FIRST BEGINNING

The first beginning was four weeks before the storm. Rachel and I were standing in front of Waukesha Jackson's home on N. Miro Street, in the Upper Ninth Ward. We were celebrating—with the entire block—the release of her book, Where Would the World Be Without Women, Stories From the Ninth Ward.

We felt blessed—the first five Neighborhood Story Project books had come out; Waukesha and her mother, Pam, had reunited; and their community had showed support in helping Waukesha document the story of the neighborhood. Her neighbor, Ms. Evella Pierre, was helping throw the party, and the Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club had decided to surprise the party with a second line to thank Waukesha for writing about them in her book. Members dressed up in their beautiful suits and hired the brass band.

Waukesha, Rachel, and the rest of the block danced, but I was too stunned by the beauty, and too overwhelmed to see the best block party of my life celebrating this book. When the second-line was over, and the DJ had begun, Troy Materre, one of the members of Nine Times, leaned over and told us, "It's got us wanting to do our own book." It sounded like a good idea, but we were breaking for the summer and had to think about starting the writing program up again at John McDonogh Senior High for the fall.

BEGINNING AGAIN

After the levee failure, John McDonogh didn’t reopen for the school year. Rachel was working with Helen Regis and members of Nine Times on an article for American Anthropologist. The guys were excited about the article, but also wanted to do a book of their own. Rachel and I talked about it, and decided it was going to be the Neighborhood Story Project's main project for the year.

We started having writing workshops on Monday nights. Beginning with writing about boyhoods in Desire. Beginning again with teenage years at Carver. For ten months, club members wrote down the moments that went into starting the Nine Times. Then they began the interviews, catching people as they came back to town and started rebuilding. Corey Woods interviewing Adolph Bynum as he started cleaning out his Gentilly house. Troy getting his mother to write a piece for the book just before she passed. Jean Nelson arranging an interview with To Be Continued Brass Band while they played for tips on Bourbon Street. Michael Simmons interviewing his mother about growing up in the Ninth Ward. Gerald Platenburg interviewing Linda Porter from the Lady Buck Jumpers.

On November 17, 2006, we celebrated the book release. And then, after writing a book to span the distances, Nine Times brought us together with their first parade back in the Ninth Ward since the storm. With the theme "Rebuilding from the Ground Up," we retraced the map of places and relationships documented in the book.

by Abram Himelstein