Book review: Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Author | Michelle N. Eliasson |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758020952294 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
Book review
Rebecca Louise Carter
Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City.
Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press, 2019, ISBN 9780226635835 (e-book), 273 pp.
Reviewed by: Michelle N. Eliasson (University of Florida, USA), Email: michelle.nilsson@ufl.edu
DOI: 10.1177/0269758020952294
In Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City, Rebecca Louise Carter
shares Black narratives of Black humanity in Black urban life by describing experiences and
reflections of grief. She highlights the significance of religion, faith, and spirituality as essential
aspects of the history and contexts of how individuals handle, speak, and think about grief when
losing a loved one. Carter has previously published Life-in-Death: Raising Dead Sons in New
Orleans (2017) and Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Placemaking at a Civil Rights
Memorial in New Orleans (2014), reflecting her knowledge of the Black experience in urban life.
Carter (2019) conducts an ethnographic study that effortlessly addresses complex notions such
as faith, grief, religiously, systematic violence, and racism all in one book. This book situates grief
and the Black experience in the academic discourse and highlights how an interdisciplinary
approach brings forward the dynamic meanings of the narratives shared. She describes social
norms of grief in relation to the experiences of the individuals who are subjected to systemic
racism. Carter shares her ethnographic experience in New Orleans by relaying the empirical
encounters she had with community members, and discusses regional and national historical facts
about the symbolism of faith and religiosity. By gaining her participants’ trust and getting accepted
into the local community, she had an unprecedented opportunity to take part in intimate conversa-
tions about grief. She highlights the complex dynamics of the Black experience in relation to grief
as profoundly influenced by many factors in the local community, including structural and inter-
personal factors, such as social support and community embeddedness.
The book consists of six chapters separated into three parts: Part 1: On Fragile Ground – Clouds;
Part 2: In Search of Love at Liberty Street – Walk Out There on Faith; and Part 3: Raising Dead
Sons – Seeing. The book explores the many layers of the experience of Black people navigating
survival and grief post-Katrina. Carter explains how a string of murders targeting Black individuals
living in New Orleans in 2006 and 2007 triggered her interest in the topic of grief. One of the
book’s critical questions is how Black lives are valued and perceived in death and life. This is
contextualized by describing the Black history of New Orleans, relaying the historical context from
slavery to the rise of the new Black New Orleans, and the development of poverty and policy
intervention that mostly impacted the poor Black population.
Carter situates the narratives and the history of Black people in New Orleans by emphasizing
the religious and spiritual paths that impacted the narratives of survival and by describing the
International Review of Victimology
2021, Vol. 27(1) 125–126
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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