This article discusses John Gregory Brown’s A Thousand Miles from Nowhere (2016) from a perspective that emphasizes its centrality both as a southern Studies text focusing on Hurricane Katrina and as an important exploration of the relationship between waste, trauma and storytelling. Employing an eclectic methodological approach that combines ecocritical and cultural theories, I will argue that Brown is engaged in a particularly complex project, which examines both the structural violence that contributed to the trauma of Katrina, and the kind of stories that are relevant in the changing US South. Through the author’s intelligent foregrounding of stories that rely on ‘lost’ or ‘wasted words’, I will demonstrate that A Thousand Miles from Nowhere has a unique place in the body of literary representations of Hurricane Katrina, which not only comments on the catastrophe’s potential for social renewal but also questions the identity of the US South’s contemporary storytellers in a way that stresses the significance of genuine cross-cultural dialogue. Ultimately, I will show that Brown’s novel, through its clever handling of waste, trauma, storytelling and the possibility of redemption can be read as the author’s thought-provoking statement on the changing US South.
Artemis Michailidou (Mon,) studied this question.