University of Illinois Press

Katherine H. Adams is William and Audrey Hutchinson Distinguished Professor in the department of English at Loyola University, New Orleans, and is coauthor of the new book Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign.

When I left New Orleans at 1:30 on the day that Katrina struck, I expected to be back in a day or two.  I left with my son, my beagle, a couple of t-shirts, and the laptop computer that had been in my Jeep—luckily.  I did not get back for several months; I did not know for a long time if I had a house or office. But my brother-in-law in Jacksonville helped me print my co-authored book on Alice Paul and the American suffrage campaign, the only accessible copy of which was right there on that computer, and mail it to Champaign. 

In that UPS Store, I felt a sense of triumph over adversity, not equal to the suffragists’ survival of hunger striking and forced feeding in American jails, but nice indeed. Better yet, this week I was standing in my recovering university when this fine looking book came in the mail.