Cajun Columbus


Book Description

Christopher Columbus journey to America in 1492 towers throughout history as one of the most daring adventures of mans exploration. In sailing his three tiny ships through uncharted waters to a new land, Columbus became the central character in an event that changed the course of the world. Cajun Columbus offers a slightly revised version of that historic venture, one in which a pivotal role is held by an intrepid Cajun named Pierre Lastrapes, whose descendents today inhabit the bayou country of South Louisiana. Pierre falls asleep in his pirogue and winds up in Spain, volunteering to use his navigational skills to lead Columbus and his hardy band of explorers across the Atlantic Bayou to the New World. Calling upon knowledge gleaned from a roving band of Vikings, Pierre leads Columbus to a landing on Avery Island and later saves the explorer from hostile Attakapas Indians. In the process, Columbus is introduced to an exotic new crop which he carries back to Spainthe hot pepper for which Avery Island is world famous.




Cajun Breakdown


Book Description

In 1946, Harry Choates, a Cajun fiddle virtuoso, changed the course of American musical history when his recording of the so-called Cajun national anthem "Jole Blon" reached number four on the national Billboard charts. Cajun music became part of the American consciousness for the first time thanks to the unprecedented success of this issue, as the French tune crossed cultural, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic boundaries. Country music stars Moon Mullican, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, and Hank Snow rushed into the studio to record their own interpretations of the waltz-followed years later by Waylon Jennings and Bruce Springsteen. The cross-cultural musical legacy of this plaintive waltz also paved the way for Hank Williams Sr.'s Cajun-influenced hit "Jamabalaya." Choates' "Jole Blon" represents the culmination of a centuries-old dialogue between the Cajun community and the rest of America. Joining into this dialogue is the most thoroughly researched and broadly conceived history of Cajun music yet published, Cajun Breakdown. Furthermore, the book examines the social and cultural roots of Cajun music's development through 1950 by raising broad questions about the ethnic experience in America and nature of indigenous American music. Since its inception, the Cajun community constantly refashioned influences from the American musical landscape despite the pressures of marginalization, denigration, and poverty. European and North American French songs, minstrel tunes, blues, jazz, hillbilly, Tin Pan Alley melodies, and western swing all became part of the Cajun musical equation. The idiom's synthetic nature suggests an extensive and intensive dialogue with popular culture, extinguishing the myth that Cajuns were an isolated folk group astray in the American South. Ryan André Brasseaux's work constitutes a bold and innovative exploration of a forgotten chapter in America's musical odyssey.




An Irish Hallowe'en


Book Description

When Wise Woman Magee is trapped into nursing a goblin back to health, she only ecapes with the help of her children whose Snap Apple Night costumes frighten the goblins.




Cajun Night Before Christmas


Book Description

A version in Cajun dialect of the famous poem "The Night Before Christmas," set in a Louisiana bayou.




Cajun Women and Mardi Gras


Book Description

Cajun Women and Mardi Gras is the first book to explore the importance of women’s contributions to the country Cajun Mardi Gras tradition, or Mardi Gras “run.” Most Mardi Gras runs--masked begging processions through the countryside, led by unmasked capitaines--have customarily excluded women. Male organizers explain that this rule protects not only the tradition’s integrity but also women themselves from the event’s rowdy, often drunken, play. Throughout the past twentieth century, and especially in the past fifty years, women in some prairie communities have insisted on taking more active and public roles in the festivities. Carolyn E. Ware traces the history of women’s participation as it has expanded from supportive roles as cooks and costume makers to increasingly public performances as Mardi Gras clowns and (in at least one community) capitaines. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork interviews and observation in Mardi Gras communities, Ware focuses on the festive actions in Tee Mamou and Basile to reveal how women are reshaping the celebration as creative artists and innovative performers.




Too Tall Thomas Rides the Grub Line


Book Description

When Too Tall Thomas finishes the trail drive, he finds miscellaneous work in exchange for meals, but he cannot wait to get back to real cowboy work.




Lyn and the Fuzzy


Book Description

Grown from a special seed, Fuzzy, a huge, strong, friendly creature, becomes Lyn's constant companion until the cold winds blow.




Santa's Revenge


Book Description

Santa Claus's face has lost its glow because of all the things the author has put him through in other books, and so he takes his revenge.




Trail Drive


Book Description

Texas Jack, the jackrabbit, describes the life of the cowboy during a trail drive from the Texas plains to markets in the North after the Civil War.




A Creole Lexicon


Book Description

Throughout Louisiana's colonial and postcolonial periods, there evolved a highly specialized vocabulary for describing the region's buildings, people, and cultural landscapes. This creolized language -- a unique combination of localisms and words borrowed from French, Spanish, English, Indian, and Caribbean sources -- developed to suit the multiethnic needs of settlers, planters, explorers, builders, surveyors, and government officials. Today, this historic vernacular is often opaque to historians, architects, attorneys, geographers, scholars, and the general public who need to understand its meanings. With A Creole Lexicon, Jay Edwards and Nicolas Kariouk provide a highly organized resource for its recovery. Here are definitions for thousands of previously lost or misapplied terms, including watercraft and land vehicles, furniture, housetypes unique to Louisiana, people, and social categories. Drawn directly from travelers' accounts, historic maps, and legal documents, the volume's copious entries document what would actually have been heard and seen by the peoples of the Louisiana territory. Newly produced diagrams and drawings as well as reproductions of original eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents and Historic American Buildings Surveys enhance understanding. Sixteen subject indexes list equivalent English words for easy access to appropriate Creole translations. A Creole Lexicon is an invaluable resource for exploring and preserving Louisiana's cultural heritage.