How Art Helps New Orleans Students Deal With Their Post-Katrina PTSD

“Trauma is all about details. Trauma renders itself in certain songs, in the quality of the air against the sky, in colors of socks, in flavors of alcohol. When the human brain encounters a trauma, it makes quick decisions about what to remember, and it often remembers otherwise mundane details: the timbre of birdsong, or the specific shake of a tree’s shoulders. Sometimes the brain gets kind of obsessive about trauma.”