CLIFFSNOTES: Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster"

1. “Counterculture groups
played an important role, from descendants of the
black power movement to hordes
of young white anarchists.”
(p.281)

2. “The joy in disaster comes, when it comes, from
that purposefulness, the immersion in service and sur-vival...”
(p.306)

3. “Every disaster is to some degree a social
disaster, and though a strong and united
society cannot prevent disasters, it can
plan and prepare for them...”
(p.266)

4. “When I came to the Gulf Coast, I thought that
my subject was the extraordinary communities of
volunteers that had sprung up in the
wake of Katrina...”
(p.247)

5. The out-of-town volunteers were of-ten
very different from the locals, emotionally and cul-turally.
(p.288)

6. “Of course that was a movement that came out of
the black churches of the South, and so it was
religious from its roots on up.”
(p.285)

7. “It was white people talking about
the savage things other white people
had done to
black people.”
(p.247)

8. “A black woman and white man
were singing and playing music as people sat at long ta-bles
talking and eating.”
(p.288)

9. “The world watched as a largely impoverished, largely
African American
population suffered in the hot, filthy ruinous city.”
(p.240)

10. “Half an hour later, I met an African
American man who’d been in New Or-leans
all his life.”
(p.288)

11. “Counterculture groups played an important role, from
descendants of the black power movement to hordes of
young white anarchists.”
(p.281)

12. “A stocky, red-haired earnest
young manwho had recently
graduated from Columbia University...”
(p.300)

13. “For acted upon, given a role, this is a love that
builds society, resilience, community, purpose, and
meaning.”
(p.306)