Oprah's Angels: 65 Families, One Big Storm, and the American Dream

by Peter Moskowitz, P.E. Moskowitz

At the edge of Houston sits a community like no 65 petite, pastel houses inhabited by survivors of Hurricane Katrina and built by one of the most famous people in the world, Oprah Winfrey. The community, funded with $10 million of Oprah's money just a few months after Katrina, is made up of 65 families picked by nonprofit Habitat for Humanity. All pay around $400 a month in mortgage to live there. The houses are nearly identical. Their furnishings were selected by Nate Berkus, and paid for by Oprah's television sponsors.

Angel Lane is not only a place, but an idea. It's the idea that people like Lynell McFarland, a fifty-four-year-old nursing assistant, could find better work and a better life for her daughter outside New Orleans; that people like Coleen Walters could overcome the loss of her husband and home through the construction of a new one.

Angel Lane is the embodiment of a theory that tragedy – like the systemic urban poverty of New Orleans, and the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina – can turned into opportunity, that lemons can be made into lemonade. For the last ten years, the 65 families of Angel Lane have been living proof of this idea, and proof of its severe limitations.

In OPRAH’S ANGELS, on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, reporter Peter Moskowitz brings us into the homes of the residents of Angel’s Lane who have settled in Houston to find better jobs, less crime, and a new sense of identity. But the people living here also live with Katrina's continued wake – they have mental anguish, resentment over how the U.S. government treated them, and questions about what life could have been like were it not for the man-made failures that allowed Katrina to do so much damage. Mostly, they just miss home.

Peter Moskowitz is a writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He's written for Al Jazeera America, The Guardian, Vice, Gawker, The New Republic, and many others. He's writing a book about gentrification if four U.S. New York, San Francisco, Detroit and New Orleans.

Cover design by Adil Dara.

32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 10, 2015

About the author

Also see P.E. Moskowitz.

Reviews

[Gwen - Chew & Digest Books - · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reality is that we're still doing it wrong, even those with the best of intentions.

This really short read isn't what most are going to think it will be from the title. Yes, some people did try to do good after Katrina, yet if anything, even those efforts highlighted the inequality in our country, that we still have so far to go, and that those that jump in thinking that they have the solution, even for a small number of people, continue to not be the changemakers we need.

This job, not only Katrina, the race and inequality issues are going to take all hands, all ideas, and the strength and courage to follow through even when the red tape gets as thick as some of the bigots heads.

It's well past time and to quote a great movie, "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!" I'm but one small shy person and I can make a difference today, will you? If we all make that commiment, nothing will stop us.

[Sachi Sabella · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is misleading. Def not what I expected. Interesting read, however.

[Kelly Rodeheaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meaningful, but cut short

I liked reading about some of the realities of post-Katrina, but the book ended very abruptly. Makes you think !

[Nakia Reuben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read!

My first book on Kindle. This book was inspirational and informative. The families of Katrina endured a lot and yet many didn’t survive it.

[Constance S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Sometimes you’ve got to know how to position your hell, so you can find your joy.”