I don’t remember much of how the actual city of New Orleans looked when I was a child, especially my surroundings before Hurricane Katrina. Growing up, my lens of the city was my family’s home in the Ninth Ward. Sometimes it felt like my siblings and I were in our own bubble. We usually just went to school, the grocery store, thrift stores, our grandparents’ house, and every once in a while, we might go to the park, the zoo, or something like that. My grandparents lived uptown, on Annunciation Street. But after Hurricane Katrina, I was exposed to so much more. Even though there was so much disaster, it felt like my world just opened up. I don’t know if that was because I was older, or just because I was forced out of my home and had to be among all these different people.