Sugarcane Academy by Michael Tisserand

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          Sugarcane Academy by Michael Tisserand

(Publisher’s Review)

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, taking lives and livelihoods and displacing thousands. Because the hurricane struck at the beginning of the school year, the city’s children were among those most affected. Michael Tisserand, former editor of the alternative cultural newspaper Gambit Weekly, evacuated with his family to New Iberia, Louisiana. Then, rather than waiting to find out when―or if―schools in New Orleans would reopen, Tisserand and other parents persuaded one of his children’s teachers, Paul Reynaud, to start a school among the sugarcane fields.

So was born the Sugarcane Academy ―as the children themselves named it― and so also began an experience none of Reynaud’s pupils will ever forget. This inspiring book shows how a dedicated teacher made the best out of the worst situation, and how the children of New Orleans, of all backgrounds and races, adjusted to Katrina’s consequences.

This wonderful memoir manages to do what a flood of news-reporting could not: see the tragedy of Katrina through the eyes of children. The story of the Sugarcane Academy, an improvised one-room school in a sugarcane parish in south Louisiana, will be one of the lasting books of our tragedy.”  --Andrei Codrescu, author of New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City Michael Tisserand is the author of The Kingdom of Zydeco, which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing. He served as editor of Gambit Weekly, the alternative newsweekly of New Orleans. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; First edition (July 2, 2007)

Language: English

Paperback: 184 pages

ISBN-10: 0156031892

ISBN-13: 978-0156031899

Item Weight: 6.4 ounces

Dimensions: 0.45 x 5.25 x 8 inches