Abstract
In her book on the flooding of Texas after Hurricane Harvey, author Lacy Johnson asks two questions about that disaster: What do floodwaters obscure? What do they reveal? The result is a unique atlas, entitled More City Than Water, in which Johnson uses maps and diverse eyewitness narratives to find the disturbing answer: poorer neighborhoods and communities of color suffered worst from Harvey, largely because they were forced to. Not only did Texas turn a collective blind eye to climate change but Houston also willfully ignored infrastructure in marginalized areas for decades, and after the hurricane, FEMA only rebuilt the city’s “better” neighborhoods. Texas knew the floods would come, and thanks to its many systemic inequities, the water damage was destined, even designed, to target its most vulnerable residents.
The lesson of Harvey is one we have already learned countless times in Appalachia, of course: when it comes to environmental or social injustice, our bitter past is the rest of the country’s future.