if you didn't have the money for a motel, and it came at the end of the month, if you hadn't been paid, you couldn't go. and so to see that all wash up and then to see the response... there's a moment where michael brown, the head of the federal emergency management says, "we're seeing people that we didn't know existed." and i thought never a truer word has been said. it was hard with the book, because it's an anthology, you have to kind of pick a piece and go with it. and i actually went to new orleans several times over a couple of years after katrina and it was very hard to pick one. it was such a devastating occurrence and it was one of those moments where you couldn'tjust gloss over it. and so, kind of, the american media in that moment kind of discovered race and class in a way that teenagers kind of discover sex, you know, it was kind of careless and urgent and just