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Let’s Go on Down to the Second Line

Death Practices in New Orleans

Let’s Go on Down to the Second Line cover

Let’s Go on Down to the Second Line

Death Practices in New Orleans

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Pre-order. Available Nov 12 2026
$42.12 RRP $52.65 Website price saving $10.53 (20%)

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Description

Like an artery through the city of New Orleans, you can hop on the streetcar named 'cemeteries' along Canal Street in the bustling French Quarter, full of life, and in a short time be surrounded by a variety of above ground mausoleums. The same streetcar line will take passengers almost like the river Styx to the quiet solemnity of the cemeteries and then return the passengers to the bright livelihood of the French Quarter. The duality of a life lived and the inevitability of death is a thread in the fabric that is New Orleans.

Between the second lines that mark the beginnings of weddings and lives lived together to the second lines that mark the lives lived in the afterlife, the co-mingling is ever-present. This book is an ethnographic attempt to explore New Orleans death practices and examine its rich culture. New Orleans appears to capture people's interests – either for its 'spooky' aura, cultural importance, or its race, class and gender issues – and readers can get a simultaneous sense of how importantly and 'normally' New Orleans thinks of, handles, and discusses death.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: New Orleans Culture
Chapter 2: History of Death in the City
Chapter 3: Second Lines/Jazz Funerals/Super Sundays
Chapter 4: Burial Practices
Chapter 5: Cemetery Practices
Chapter 6: Mardi Gras Parades
Chapter 7: Before/After Katrina: Marker of Time
Chapter 8. Conclusion

References

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Nov 12 2026
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 240
ISBN 9798881804503
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Stephanie M. Baran

Stephanie M. Baran is instructor at Nicholls State…

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