Summary

The section on Diana, a 44-year-old housekeeper from Peru now living in Mississipi, is titled, “Polishing the Slot Machines Before Katrina.” Before Diana came to the U.S., she had been working in the Andes of Peru in the garment industry. When the economy declined, she had no purchasing power and so came to Mississippi, where her son had immigrated six years before. She took a job in a casino in the small town of Biloxi, where there is a small Peruvian community. The day before Hurricane Katrina struck the area, while everyone else in the city was fleeing, Diana and the rest of the cleaning crew had been told to work long hours at night.

When the storm hit, Diana took shelter in a church. She remembers that it took about a month for aid to reach Biloxi. During...