As soon as I saw your title for this piece, I was immediately intrigued! It's so interesting and cool that there would be special graves/gravesites to accommodate Jewish burial practices. Having never visited New Orleans, I always forget that it has a higher water level compared to other places. So fascinating how it affects burial practices.
I also really love the connection you made between these graveyards and our death-denying culture! Another place where the dead and graveyards are more openly regarded is Edinburgh, Scotland! I visited last year and got to tour some of the graveyards. Such a cool place with an interesting (but dark) history!
Have you read Jack by Marilynne Robinson? The opening scene is in Bellefontaine cemetery (the site of an interracial romance between a white apostate stewbum son of a minister and a lovely upstanding young Black woman, a new teacher at Sumner and the daughter of a Baptist minister herself. Robinson did an excellent job researching St. Louis history.
Holy cats! No. She's brilliant and I adore her, but someohw I've never read that book. It may take me a few months to get to it, but writing myself a note to slot that in the queue!
It's really good. Usually I am hypercritical of books about St. Louis that are not by St. Louisans (my provincialism is extreme!), but she did an excellent job. I'm sure she availed herself of the help of many local research librarians. Very good as historical fiction, and it got me interested in Sumner and Vashon as destination schools for Black people who participated in the Great Migration.
Me too! And wow, if it talks about the Great Migration, it's a for-sure read for me. In my experience, research librarians LOVE helping on projects like this, and not just to make sure that disinfo isn't swirling out there (which is sitll disinfo, even if it's in novel form).
As soon as I saw your title for this piece, I was immediately intrigued! It's so interesting and cool that there would be special graves/gravesites to accommodate Jewish burial practices. Having never visited New Orleans, I always forget that it has a higher water level compared to other places. So fascinating how it affects burial practices.
I also really love the connection you made between these graveyards and our death-denying culture! Another place where the dead and graveyards are more openly regarded is Edinburgh, Scotland! I visited last year and got to tour some of the graveyards. Such a cool place with an interesting (but dark) history!
This morning’s New York Times has a opinion piece that can be read as a comment to this Historiola.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/opinion/rosh-hashana-death.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Have you read Jack by Marilynne Robinson? The opening scene is in Bellefontaine cemetery (the site of an interracial romance between a white apostate stewbum son of a minister and a lovely upstanding young Black woman, a new teacher at Sumner and the daughter of a Baptist minister herself. Robinson did an excellent job researching St. Louis history.
Holy cats! No. She's brilliant and I adore her, but someohw I've never read that book. It may take me a few months to get to it, but writing myself a note to slot that in the queue!
It's really good. Usually I am hypercritical of books about St. Louis that are not by St. Louisans (my provincialism is extreme!), but she did an excellent job. I'm sure she availed herself of the help of many local research librarians. Very good as historical fiction, and it got me interested in Sumner and Vashon as destination schools for Black people who participated in the Great Migration.
Me too! And wow, if it talks about the Great Migration, it's a for-sure read for me. In my experience, research librarians LOVE helping on projects like this, and not just to make sure that disinfo isn't swirling out there (which is sitll disinfo, even if it's in novel form).