Ink Splatters

JoyAnn
AuthorHouse (2011)
ISBN 9781467039239
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (1/12) 

 

Katrina was called the “great equalizer” by many, yet those of us who have actually been affected by it directly have a slew of other names for her, none as nice as this. Anybody who has lived in the area affected by this hurricane has had to deal with many issues in its wake, and we continue to do so. We all battle our demons in our unique ways, and I am not one to judge how right or how wrong are another person’s perceptions of events before, during and after the storm. What I am willing to do, and have being doing ever since those incredibly scary days back in August 2005, is to say that I hope we have all learned something positive from it, and that we are willing to move forward.

Yes, a perceptive reader of this book review has certainly figured out that I have been “there,” although not quite in the same way as JoyAnn has. We actually left less than 24 hours before landfall, so we have been spared the horrors of Superdome and/or being plucked off a roof somewhere. But I have stood in a line at the Red Cross, waiting to be registered with them, so our family and friends will know that we made it out alive. I’ve dealt with the insurance and FEMA and all the other entities involved with it. And I have my share of memories and mental scars to prove it. My New Orleans is no more and it never will be the same. That’s why I could definitely feel JoyAnn’s pain and desperation. What I could not, and would not want to feel, is a sentiment that she expresses on most every page of “Ink Splatters,” namely that the world was out to get her at every step. She kept repeating how grateful she was to God for not abandoning her, and how prayerful she was, yet I detected no sense of gratitude anywhere. Everything was somebody else’s fault. The people in Arkansas, particularly the one who tried to hit her with a car (and who, just maybe, was asleep or drunk or otherwise impaired, since it was four o’clock in the morning after all...), and those who were in charge of the apartment she rented, her employer, the USPS, her contractor, her doctor... you name it, everybody was and is out to get her. She’s saying how grateful she is, yet showing the reader a totally different picture. I also questioned the rationale for writing a book under a pseudonym, yet stating one’s full name in the first chapter of it. This was just one of many confusing parts of this narrative.

I also had a lot of trouble reading those ruminations due to truly overwhelming editing and proofreading issues, and I really wish the author would take to heart advice she so freely dispensed in the chapter devoted to giving suggestions to the other first time authors. She very clearly stated that the future author should read and re-read the output prior to release, and if she would have followed her own advice, I am quite confident that sentences such as the few listed below would not have found their way into the finished book.

- “Retirement, although inevitably wasn’t an easy choice for me.”
- “Like me, you did not pre-evacuate nor did you seek sheltered at the Superdome.”
- “... in his place is Barrack Obama.”

While I applaud Ms. JoyAnn for the courage to put her feelings on paper, I truly do not understand the purpose of “Ink Splatters” beyond it being a means of a personal catharsis. There are many books out there about Katrina and the way it reshaped our lives, and unfortunately “Ink Splatters” is not one I would recommend. JoyAnn’s Katrina is one of bitterness towards the world, and I am instead determined to remember the little old “church lady” from Iowa, who together with her friends drove a rickety old van to New Orleans to deliver warm food and who gave me a new toothbrush. As I said in the beginning, we all deal with our demons in our unique ways...

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