Jesmyn Ward Quotes

Every member of my family was displaced by Katrina.

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

People don't actually stay still, you know - when their area is a disaster, they go somewhere else, right? And that's just a natural human impulse.

I've done a lot of things away from my homeland.

Resettlement in new homes was the only possible and practicable solution

My mom is from New Orleans. And all of my maternal relatives were there during Katrina. We couldn't even find my uncle for four months. We literally didn't know where he was. I had been there just four days before the storm hit.

My family and I survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005; we left my grandmother's flooding house, were refused shelter by a white family, and took refuge in trucks in an open field during a Category Five hurricane. I saw an entire town demolished, people fighting over water, breaking open caskets searching for something that could help them survive.

I left Cameroon when I was 13 years old, and I've lived more in Europe than Africa.

I was born in Cyprus, but my family moved to England when I was about six.

I've been through so much, especially coming from New Orleans where there was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I had to pick up. We had to move, make new friends, and I think my family was just strong for me as well because we had to start completely over again.

I left Jamaica to come to England, but one place became another place. I lived in Tulse Hill, in Brixton and Coldharbour Lane.

I am very aware that there are many of you who have friends and loved ones in the areas affected by this storm who have been displaced or who have not yet been accounted for.

When I came there I found all my family gone, for the Indians had killed five people in the winter near that place, which frightened my wife and family away to Roanoke about 35 miles nearer in among the inhabitants, which I was informed of by an old man I met near the place.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

Whenever you move, I think you lose your history.

I was raised in New York and then moved to Miami in my teenage years, returning to New York later on.

I was born in San Antonio, TX, but moved to Lakewood, CO in elementary school. Then, I moved to Valley Center, CA in high school.

I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed.

I don't really remember the day we lost our home in the floods, but looking back I can understand how devastating it was for my parents. I was only six, so I remember us having to move to Adelaide - but not much of the actual day and night of the flood. We had to start all over again and my parents opened a cafe.

I was just about 6 weeks old when we moved to Detroit.

My mother gave up everything for me. In Yekaterinburg, she had a job and an apartment in the centre of the city and her whole life. And in Moscow - nothing.

I moved south when I was 11 years old, moved to England. I've lived in all kinds of places, all parts of England.

Both me and my wife's extended family all live within a 50-mile radius. Like me, a lot of them did time in London then started drifting back to the countryside and the sea. Perhaps it's a homing instinct.

Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

A disaster like a hurricane is like a football game. You are going to lose the first quarter. There is no way you will win that quarter. The question is how ugly you will lose that quarter. Then you go into the second quarter – the search and rescue.