Women of the Storm

Women of the Storm: Civic Activism after Hurrican Katrina provides a sociohistorical account of the emergence of Women of the Storm in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. After presenting a detailed description of the group’s initial formation, the book chronicles its struggles from 2006 to 2012, beginning with the women’s efforts to invite lawmakers to see Katrina’s destruction firsthand and ending with their campaigns to restore the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Drawing on extensive interviews with Women of the Storm members, ethnographic observations, and historical documents, the book provides a detailed account of women’s civic activism in the wake of disaster, revealing the entire Katrina recovery in a more complex light. In addition to documenting the group’s influence on public policy, the book argues that members of Women of the Storm used post-disaster activism to establish meaningful cultural spaces in which they constructed gender solidarity, negotiated racial and socioeconomic differences, and crafted new forms of social and moral responsibility. The book addresses how Hurricane Katrina brought these women together and how they actively negotiated the everyday challenges of working across social divides.