Cetywa Powell’s Meanwhile Here in Austin is not a conventional memoir, travelogue, or photography collection, but rather a layered fusion of all three. It is also a deep look into everyday life in Texas’s capital, following Powell’s move there. Structured around the seasons, Powell’s work unfolds as a series of vignettes, interlaced with high-quality photography. With prose as intimate as a diary, this is the perfect book for anyone interested in the city of Austin or W. G. Sebald-style memoirs.
From the opening pages, the book presents itself as a love letter: “This is a love letter to you. To you, Austin. Because you led me here and welcomed me in that warm, Southern way.” Austin is celebrated but not idealised; its storms and scorching summers are recorded with the same candour as its beautiful sunsets. Powell acknowledges flaws without withdrawing her affection. The relationship between a person and the city they live in is complex, much like any long-term partnership, and this book will probably make you reflect on your relationship to wherever you live.
One of the book’s great strengths is its sense of seasonality. Each section—spring, summer, fall, winter—becomes a lens through which to examine the city. Spring brings deer sightings, wildflowers, and the communal awe of the 2024 solar eclipse. Summer ushers in cicadas, swimming holes, and the suffocating heat. Fall is marked by pumpkin nights, bat flights from under the Congress Bridge, and live music. Winter brings both fleeting beauty and danger, especially in Powell’s vivid recollection of Winter Storm Uri, when her family melted snow for water and huddled under camping gear in their own home.
Thematically, the book resists neat categorisation. It is part photographic diary, part social history, and part reflection on motherhood and migration. Powell situates her family’s move to Austin within the larger context of change: the influx of Californians, the tech boom reshaping the skyline, and, of course, the dreaded pandemic. At the same time, she zooms in on details that seem almost trivial but prove to be profound: a puddle that reflects downtown skyscrapers, a cicada shell on a garbage can, the banality of waiting in carpool lines. At these moments, the entire book feels like a poem.
This is also a book that fans of photography will really get a lot out of. Though the book is filled with text, Powell is also a skilled photographer. A recurring motif is her practice of “chasing puddles,” rushing out after storms to capture the way water mirrors Austin’s evolving skyline. In fact, in many ways, the photos are the main appeal of the book, and you could argue without them, the book wouldn’t work as the writing is a little plain and there’s no real story. However, that doesn’t necessarily diminish its value. The text serves as a connective tissue, giving context and narrative shape to the images.
The book also does not shy away from darker notes. Powell recalls the disruption of Covid-19, the surreal emptiness of malls and streets, the struggles of balancing safety and schooling for her son. She dedicates a blank page to a local shooting near a beloved café. This is not a boosterish city portrait designed to sell Austin to outsiders; it is more an in-depth, psychological look into one person’s experience with the city. Stylistically, the prose is spare, journal-like, often clipped into short sentences. It reads almost as a sequence of captions extended into narrative. The effect is cumulative: while no single passage aims for lyrical grandeur, together they build a voice that feels authentic.
Perhaps the most poignant thread running through the book is Powell’s role as mother. Her son appears repeatedly: discovering deer with wide eyes, playing video games impatiently while waiting in the car, growing out of water parks. The city is filtered through his presence, and in many ways the book is as much a record of his childhood as of Austin’s evolution. Place and person are intertwined. Powell’s sense of home is inseparable from watching her home grow up against the backdrop of bluebonnets, cicadas, and BBQ smoke.
By the book’s end, Powell acknowledges that Austin is impermanent, both in its urban form and in her own life within it. At exactly 100 pages, Meanwhile Here in Austin is a humble, meditative book. It resists grandiose statements of a conventional story in favour of careful observation and poetic reflection. For readers seeking an authentic portrait of Austin beyond the stereotypes of SXSW, cowboy hats, and tech startups, Powell offers something rare: a lived, embodied, and deeply personal account.
Verdict: A thoughtful, photographic memoir full of beautiful photography, capturing the rhythms of life in Austin with poetic prose.
You can get your copy of Meanwhile, Here in Austin by Cetywa Powell here!
