When the Wind Blows

Even though Lafayette, Louisiana is 150 miles to the west of New Orleans, the city was affected by Katrina, and its twin, Rita, in significant ways. While the eye of neither storm passed directly over Lafayette, we experienced a cosmology episode as the effects of back-to-back severe hurricanes made the world, if only for a short time, less rational and orderly. Based on personal experience as well as an analysis of student essays, this article is an attempt to articulate an essence of a liminal time. Exploring how we attempted to narrate this crisis can provide insight into the ways language works to make, and to simultaneously resist, the discursive event of trauma into a lived experience.