This past Friday, November 30th, I had the pleasure of hearing my good friend Michael Molina read from his novel in verse, The Second Line.  Mike is currently workshopping a stage adaptation of this text that takes the reader of a guided lyrical tour of New Orleans.  Told from the perspective of a young man riding the bus through the city that "care forgot," The Second Line offers a vivid portrait of N'Orleans, speaking to city's reality before and after Hurricane Katrina. 

I used one of the earlier iterations of The Second Line, Purgatory Stories, in a course on Race and Reconstruction that I taught last year at Lang College.  The attention paid to many of the apocalyptic historical moments in N'Orleans history that makes it the racial, ethnic and cultural bouillon that it is enlightened our discussions of the America emanating from the experiment with Reconstruction. 

 Click on either of the following sites for more information on Mike and The Second Line

Purgatory Stories

MOMolina.org

Here's a picture of Mike from Friday's Soul Sessions event at Berkeley's Epic Arts Center.  The event was curated by Monica Simpson in conjunction with Grassroots Leadership.