Hurricanes

Hurricanes is a collection of letters and essays about the human experience of hurricanes. Two of the writers, the teacher Donna Tiapula and the poet John Enright, wrote to friends and relatives during the Samoan hurricanes of 1990 and 1991. Jerome Gold, novelist and anthropologist, provides a moving evocation of Samoa before the destruction and a later glimpse of the impact these storms made. Award-winning essayist Marilyn Stablein’s thoughts on Galveston’s experience of Hurricane Alicia off a view of the relationship between the destruction outside ourselves and the fear of chaos within. From Donna Tiapula’s letter: The sea is hard to describe. Usually it is such a beautiful deep blue & now it is green and ugly…Two small homes have been destroyed, gone totally. The bay is filled with waves on the reef 20 to 30 ft. tall. Not one or two waves, but 100’s an hour…It is really blowing now…Wind is fierce. We cannot see the bay, rain and wind obstruct the view…I am so scared. My stomach aches. I am angry…