The Southern Gothic Field Guide

Service Description

Beginning at the Black-owned Baldwin Book Store & Coffee Shop (named for James Baldwin and celebrated by Oprah Winfrey), this tour takes an unusual route to explore the intersecting aesthetic traditions of Gothic literature, Black liberation narratives, Sex Worker feminism, and Queer writers of New Orleans. Guests will visit historic homes associated with such diverse figures as playwright Tennessee Williams and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. After stops on historic Frenchmen Street (known for its Jazz scene), throughout the Marigny triangle (including the bar that made Bukowski question his sexuality), and Esplanade Ave (site of both slave auction blocks and radical faerie performance art at different points in history), the tour ends in the French Quarter at a modern day Hoodoo shop owned by a gay Black healer.