How do we work?

Once every few weeks a new topic will be displayed on the blog. Young people, ages 5 - 96, will submit their responses. Student writing will be posted as it is received. Know someone that would love to contribute? Pass the word.

Blog #14 Topic Choices:
Write about a place or an aspect of New Orleans that has influenced you OR use the words "Escaping the heat/to get out of the heat..." of New Orleans.

Submission Logistics: Submissions should be in response to the blog topic. Poetry and prose, up to 500 words in length, should be emailed as a Microsoft Word attachment. Emails should include author’s first name, age, and School.

Submissions can be sent to: youngneworleanswritingtogether@gmail.com
Submission due date: May 31st, 2012 @ 5pm

Monday, April 30, 2012

Victoria - Home

To me, New Orleans is home because it changes the meaning of what it is to feel at home.

Feeling at home means having a place
Whose culture is so infectious
That one is able to overlook its short-comings. In New Orleans,
It means looking over the recent football and government scandals, the crime and overall lawlessness
In favor of po-boys, snowballs, and new catchphrases like “free payton”.

Living in New Orleans stirs up such pride that I do not even mind when “foreigners” criticize the way
I talk, because they are incapable of understanding—it is not even their fault. That is what home is. A
place you are so in love with that even insults directed towards it are viewed as compliments. It entails
possessing a sort of blind pride.

Some question the value of living in a city that experiences a constant influx of tourists, with their
Hawaiian shirts and fanny packs, though more commonly, with a bottle of alcohol in one (or both)
hands.
But no matter how many tourists come, make a mess, and then leave, I know that New Orleans will
always be home.
And, anyway, locals cherish a different New Orleans than the one that tourists visit.

Victoria, age 17
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