That Was Then and This is, Too: Writing on Carville, Louisiana

That Was Then and This is, Too is a collection of lyric essays and other writings that explore the close relationship between the author’s family and the Gillis W. Long Center. Formerly known as the Louisiana Leper Home (or, “The Hospital”, as it was known locally), it was the last isolated community of people with Hansen’s Disease, in the contiguous United States, operating from ~1894-2005 under the auspices of the federal government in conjunction with Catholic Church. This collection is a meditation on the liminal and delicate spaces between history and myth, North and South, stigma and fame, disease and disability, the animal and the human, social rejection and the radical pursuit of freedom through many generations on the author’s patrilineal side. It is, fundamentally, an investigation of a place no one wanted to go, a place people were sent as punishment, that became a site of innovation and liberation. That Was Then is determined to complicate constructions of disability, histories of disease, and to make technicolor the black and white presentations of a time and place long gone. History and memory become warped in images of the grotesque, 90’s political pop culture references, scatological humor, and Cajun culture. Many of these narratives honor truth and family lore simultaneously, though they do prioritize myth over history. Influenced by writers who are experts in their surroundings - Kate Chopin, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lee Smith, Scott McClanahan, Louise Erdrich, Breece Pancake, Carson McCullers – Carville Joel focuses her attention on the anecdotes and minutiae of life in a big family from an uncommon place.