Luquire’s columns failed to capture New Orleans

TO THE EDITOR:

The Daily Tar Heel columnist Lea Luquire has failed to capitalize on the opportunity to highlight the culture of a unique American city and its ongoing struggle to rebuild and renew this semester. Luquire’s columns, written from New Orleans during her three-month internship this semester, read as banal observations from someone too homesick for North Carolina to appreciate the vibrant city in which she lived and worked.

In one column, Luquire laughably implied that chain restaurants The Loop and Mellow Mushroom (and the latter actually has two locations in Louisiana about as close to New Orleans as Durham, where the closest location to UNC can be found) produce food equivalent to the Cajun and French cuisine for which New Orleans is world-famous.

In another, she mentioned her dislike of driving through a congested downtown, which is painfully ironic in light of the considerable amount of businesses that have not returned to the New Orleans metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina.

It is commendable that Luquire donated time and effort to a nonprofit in a city that so desperately needs people willing to help with its ongoing renewal, but it is disappointing that she failed to use her column to inform the UNC community about the interesting aspects of New Orleans and the revival of a great American city.



Rebekka Veith
Senior
English and History