Abstract
In Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City, Rebecca Louise Carter shares Black narratives of Black humanity in Black urban life by describing experiences and reflections of grief. She highlights the significance of religion, faith, and spirituality as essential aspects of the history and contexts of how individuals handle, speak, and think about grief when losing a loved one. Carter has previously published Life-in-Death: Raising Dead Sons in New Orleans (2017) and Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Placemaking at a Civil Rights Memorial in New Orleans (2014), reflecting her knowledge of the Black experience in urban life.
Carter (2019) conducts an ethnographic study that effortlessly addresses complex notions such as faith, grief, religiously, systematic violence, and racism all in one book. This book situates grief and the Black experience in the academic discourse and highlights how an interdisciplinary approach brings forward the dynamic meanings of the narratives shared. She describes social norms of grief in relation to the experiences of the individuals who are subjected to systemic racism. Carter shares her ethnographic experience in New Orleans by relaying the empirical encounters she had with community members, and discusses regional and national historical facts about the symbolism of faith and religiosity. By gaining her participants’ trust and getting accepted into the local community, she had an unprecedented opportunity to take part in intimate conversations about grief. She highlights the complex dynamics of the Black experience in relation to grief as profoundly influenced by many factors in the local community, including structural and interpersonal factors, such as social support and community embeddedness.
The book consists of six chapters separated into three parts: Part 1: On Fragile Ground – Clouds; Part 2: In Search of Love at Liberty Street – Walk Out There on Faith; and Part 3: Raising Dead Sons – Seeing. The book explores the many layers of the experience of Black people navigating survival and grief post-Katrina. Carter explains how a string of murders targeting Black individuals living in New Orleans in 2006 and 2007 triggered her interest in the topic of grief. One of the book’s critical questions is how Black lives are valued and perceived in death and life. This is contextualized by describing the Black history of New Orleans, relaying the historical context from slavery to the rise of the new Black New Orleans, and the development of poverty and policy intervention that mostly impacted the poor Black population.
Carter situates the narratives and the history of Black people in New Orleans by emphasizing the religious and spiritual paths that impacted the narratives of survival and by describing the development of African American religious ideals emerging from Black social gospel and frameworks for a sustainable Black future. The religious and spiritual impacts are discussed in both a historical context and how it provided peace and recovery for many Black people post-Katrina while navigating the space of death and transformation.
Two of the most exciting notions in the book, in my opinion, are related to situating the Black experience of grief in the geographical, historical, and situational context of New Orleans, “The Crescent City,” and the narratives of grief in relation to religiosity and spirituality. As the community is trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the hurricane, homicides were a prevalent problem magnified as New Orleans tried to reestablish itself. By highlighting the meaning of the context in which the grief narratives exist, this book is an exciting addition to the ethnographic scholarship. Although grief is considered a universal feeling, Carter’s book illustrates that the experience of grief among Black individuals in New Orleans is impacted by the complex context of Black experiences in New Orleans. More specifically, the experience of being Black and recovering from Katrina in New Orleans was affected by an ongoing struggle with racism and hostility and by grieving the loss of loved ones murdered post-Katrina.
The second notion that is impeccably described by Carter is the connection between narratives of grief and religiosity and faith. For instance, while the experience of grief can test faith, it also creates a space for women to support one another and talk about their various ways of perceiving, handling, and surviving grief. Relationships with God, faith, and spirituality become tools to navigate the grief of loved ones who were murdered. Together with faith, the church becomes one of the platforms that house discussions of grief for women and how to situate their grief of losing a loved one in relation to the structural racism that often impacts the grieving process.
One of the book’s strengths is the richness of the data and the various dimensions that Carter provides when looking at Black experiences through multiple layers of analysis. She describes how she got access to the field and how she encountered her respondents. However, from a methodological standpoint, the book could have benefited from a methodological appendix where Carter describes her strategies. Such an ethnographic piece could help many young scholars who want to pursue ethnographic work incorporating an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, an appendix in which she fleshed out her methodological choices and challenges would have been highly appreciated.
Overall, this book exemplifies how ethnography is relevant to a wide range of disciplines, incorporating historical, anthropological, and sociological frameworks, which is something that is a significant contribution to current ethnographic scholarship.