Customer Reviews

Red Beans And Ricely Yours: Poems (New Odyssey Series) (New Odyssey Series)

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Mona Lisa Saloy, formerly of New Orleans, tells a story of growing up in segregated New Orleans in her book of poetry, Red Beans and Ricely Yours. This is a slim volume packed with the flavors, sights and sounds of the author's beloved native city. Displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Saloy, a former professor at Dillard University previously resided in the Bay Area of California and recently won the Oakland Pen Award for poetry.

Written in sections with titles like Shotgun Life, Red Beans and Ricely Creole Quarters and Black Creole Love, the book yields poems that pay homage to her light, bright Creole father (My Creole Daddy) and her jet black mother (My Mother's the Daughter of a Slave), the real native foods and a way of life that are now far away memories, maybe gone forever. She humorously tells how she came by her name in Nat King Cole Babies and Black Mona Lisas and waxes philosophically about Catholic School in Parochial Product.

There is a glossary of terms at the end of the book as she uses a lot of Creole/French words and phrases and Louisiana language that is foreign to the rest of the U.S. You can taste the galait (fried bread) and beignets, smell the aroma of chicory coffee and visualize the Second Line parades as you take a journey through the Seventh Ward in an hour or less. Highly recommended even for those who do not normally read poetry.

Dera R. Williams
APOOO BookClub

Excellent collection for a Louisianaian or someone missing the Creole Culture of the state. Also, an easy trip for anyone -- learn the aspects of the Creoles in their Native Habitat.

Having met the author and experienced her loving heart, I discovered reading her work opened her loving heart to me, and enabled me to experience the humor, pathos, and everyday life of a remarkable community. I had to buy the book to share my experience with others.