It has been two years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and while the city has recovered a sense of normalcy, its population has been altered permanently by the absence of the nearly 200,000 residents, mostly African-American, who have relocated since the storm. Writers, thinkers, and politicians have all had time to answer the questions posed by Katrina and its aftermath, but as New Orleans' reigning literary scion Richard Ford said in a piece published by the Guardian UK , "Our inept attempts at words only run to lists, costs, to assessing blame. It's like Hiroshima a public official said. But, no. It's not like anything. It's what it is. That's the hard part. He, with all of us, lacked the words."