French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer On Francophone Louisiana (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: couleur libres, New Orleans, Mississippi River, Nova Scotia (more...)

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Product Description

In recent years, ethnographers have recognized south Louisiana as home to perhaps the most complex rural society in North America. More than a dozen French-speaking immigrant groups have been identified there, Cajuns and white Creoles being the most famous. In this guide to the amazing social, cultural, and linguistic variation within Louisiana’s French-speaking region, Carl A. Brasseaux presents an overview of the origins and evolution of all the Francophone communities.

Brasseaux examines the impact of French immigration on Louisiana over the past three centuries. He shows how this once-undesirable outpost of the French empire became colonized by individuals ranging from criminals to entrepreneurs who went on to form a multifaceted society—one that, unlike other American melting pots, rests upon a French cultural foundation. A prolific author and expert on the region, Brasseaux offers readers an entertaining history of how these diverse peoples created south Louisiana’s famous vibrant culture, interacting with African Americans, Spaniards, and Protestant Anglos and encountering influences from southern plantation life and the Caribbean. He explores in detail three still cohesive components in the Francophone melting pot, each one famous for having retained a distinct identity: the Creole communities, both black and white; the Cajun people; and the state’s largest concentration of French speakers—the Houma tribe.

A product of thirty years’ research, French, Cajun, Creole, Houma provides a reliable and understandable guide to the ethnic roots of a region long popular as an international tourist attraction.

About the Author

Carl A. Brasseaux is of Acadian/Cajun ancestry and was raised in a bilingual home in the heart of Louisiana’s French-speaking region. The author of more than thirty books, he is a professor of history and the director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 159 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (February 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807130362
• ISBN-13: 978-0807130360
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #425,537 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate treatment by a local expert, June 7, 2007

By	Michael K. Smith (Gonzales, Louisiana) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars LA LOUISIANE, February 2, 2007

By	Shannon Deason "SchylarRex" (Houston) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.