Non-Fiction

Stories from the Flood—as a project in its own right, and in terms of the stories it contains—highlights feminist, experimental, collaborative, community-grounded responses to living together with floods. This work is built from the understanding that sharing stories can be powerful for both the individual and the community, especially in the absence of formalized support. Community storytellers have reported that their contributions to Stories from the Flood have helped them work through the repeated traumas of frequent flooding, alongside the traumas prompted by persistent State neglect. Paying deep attention to these stories requires moving beyond disciplinary biases to take a more generous, radically empathetic view of what these blended practices might offer, where “radical empathy,” as Isabel Wilkerson (2021) describes, “means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel.”