Customer Reviews

French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana

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Author of more than thirty books and director of the Center for Louisiana Studies in Lafayette, Brasseaux is one of the principal sources of key information not only for Louisiana genealogists but for students of Louisiana history generally. This succinct volume, consisting of four lectures delivered at McNeese State University and LSU in 1999 and 2000, is a distillation of several decades of research into the ethnic roots of the state, focusing on the remaining French-speakers among us and how they got that way. Acadians and Creoles represent only two of more than a dozen immigrant groups in Louisiana that spoke French, and all of them interacted with Spanish-speaking settlers (including Canary Islanders), African slaves and freemen, and later Anglo arrivals from the British colonies to the north and east. Because, contrary to the received stereotypes, French Louisiana is far from monolithic; it will surprise many to discover that the largest surviving group of French-speaking Louisianians now is the Houma Indian tribe, residing mostly in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes. There is also a very good bibliographical essay on sources for the study of Francophone Louisiana.

I started trying to read French, Cajun, Creole, Houma for research to write articles for my website. www.gettingtochoose.com is a website to read about Louisiana and it's culture, plus just stories in general about our family. I have picked the book up several times and I find it's for a very seasoned reader. Well educated reader to be more precise, of course I didn't know at the time when I ordered this book that it was copyrighted by Louisiana State University Press in Baton Rouge, La. It's not that the book doesn't have information that I wanted it's just hard to comprehend and a dictionary is needed most of the time.

This is a very informative little book on the French culture of south Louisiana. Having a great grandmother from New Orleans who was part white European Creole, I found all of this fascinating. The word Creole seems to means so many things, and the national media uses it to describe any light skinned African American from Louisiana, which is perplexing, really drives my grandmother nuts, she is very proud of her European ancestry through her mother, but my grandmother is, uh, not black, and does not wish to be..lol, what can I say, she's of a certain generation, God love her, and she is correct to say she of European Creole ancestry, but as this books informs us, there are many different types of Creoles, but she was just not raised to see it that way, but I have slipped this book into her reading list, but I have a feeling she'll send it home with her maid and never say a word about it. Anyway, good read, well researched.