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For book reviews, news and more,
read Louisiana Book News every Sunday in The Daily Advertiser. |
Nimbus Publishing offers a
wide variety of books on the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Included are
several that deal with Acadian history and culture.
If you don’t know
about The Acadians of Nova Scotia: Past and Present by Sally
Ross and Alphonse Deveau and you love Acadian history, this one’s a
must for your library. The award-winning book focuses on those who
settled Nova Scotia, le grand dérangement and those Acadians who
returned and built the Acadian community that exists there today.
A
couple of fun titles to consider before heading up to Congrés Mondial
next year in New Brunswick are It Happened in New Brunswick by David Goss (which includes a chapter on “Life in Acadie”) and The Nova Scotia Phrase Book by Dan Soucoup, which allows you to interpret sayings such as monkey doddler and blind mush. A Maritimer’s Miscellany
by Clary Croft has hundreds of short stories to share, including the
Acadian town on Prince Edward Island where rodents feasted on crops
then headed to the sea to drown. A French ship that sailed through La
Souris (meaning mouse) viewed “a sea covered with mouse carcasses.”
Joanne Jefferson of Nova Scotia discusses Acadian culture from the viewpoint of 17-year-old Elizabeth Evans, who lives a carefree life in the Annapolis Valley of 18th century Nova Scotia in Lightning and Blackberries. When Elizabeth meets a young Acadian woman hiding out in the woods near her farm, her life is turned upside down. Elizabeth is forced to face a harsh reality of the Acadian deportation and the painful knowledge that those she has loved have lied about the past.
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Lafayette’s Rom Gomez, former legislator, newspaper owner and author of My Name Is Ron, and I’m a Recovering Legislator: Memoirs of a Louisiana State Representative, is tackling a new subject these days.
Before his political career, Gomez covered UL (then Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later University of Southwestern Louisiana) as manager of KPEL radio, following basketball Coach Beryl Shipley as he integrated the team and led them to impressive victories. This action also caused resentment and retaliation from the Louisiana State Board of Education.
In 1973, as the team went 12-0 and won the Southland Conference regular season championship for the second time, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eliminated the basketball program with a suspension, or “death penalty,” for two years, based on a series of allegations.
Gomez recounts these volatile days, along with Shipley, in Slam Dunked: The NCAA’s Shameful Reaction to Athletic Integration in the Deep South (Wordclay).
It took decades to put distance between that time and today, Gomez explained, for both he and Shipley. Bitterness remains over the NCAA decisions and the lack of support Shipley received during that time from USL, which, ironically, was the first all-white university in the South to accept undergraduate African-American students.
But now the story must be told, Gomez said, and he explains it well in this book, filled with correspondence, newspaper articles, transcripts and other documentation, as well as Shipley’s side of the story.
“Admittedly, there is a lingering bitterness about what the coach believes to be a miscarriage of justice,” Gomez writes in the introduction. “Some persons may take exception to the relating of some events in the manuscript, but it is all told based on solid research and corroborated memories.”
For those who remember the early days of integration, the first mixed-race basketball team and all that entailed, or who like Shipley wish to see the truth in print, should check out Gomez’s book and decide for themselves what really happened.
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I’m always clenching my teeth when outsiders write about South Louisiana, wondering for the umpteenth time if they will get it right. From the first page of Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, I knew I had nothing to worry about.
Johnson spent three decades as a journalist, winning numerous awards and being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her expertise in capturing the essence of a place and the richness of character and culture is profound.
The story begins with her covering a boar hunt for her Atlanta newspaper, an event that wasn’t particular newsworthy. But along the way she and her husband stumbled into Henderson and fell in love with a houseboat named Green Queen and so begins a life-altering event that continues today.
“We live to work,” she writes. “In Cajun Country, people work to live. And live they do, gloriously and riotously. They don’t only suck crawfish heads; they suck all there is to get out of this life. Could it be that simple? Was the secret to a happy life to live happily?”
Johnson shares with readers her love for Cajun music and dancing and the singing of Helene Boudreaux and D.L. Menard, the state’s high proportion of nicknames, great po-boys found at Bon Creole in New Iberia and how friends drop heaven and earth to help one another.
“Time and again the characteristic Cajun generosity would reveal itself, bringing tears to my flinty eyes and restoring my faith in human nature.”
Poor Man’s Provence is a rich examination of a colorful, cultural state. We know it, but it’s nice to read that someone good with a pen thinks so too. |
Sara Roahen moved to New Orleans when her husband was
accepted into medical school. A former vegetarian from the Midwest with
culinary experience, she obtained a job as restaurant critic for the city’s
alternative newspaper, Gambit Weekly, and sought to understand the food scene
of the Big Easy, which wasn’t so easy for a vegetarian from the Midwest.
Her
foray into foods
with names like sno-balls and turducken led her to pen Gumbo Tales: Finding
My Place at the New Orleans Table (W.W.
Norton, $24.95), which explains New Orleans foods for those who don’t know a
Sazerac from an alligator pear. Each chapter takes on new territory, from gumbo
to the Vietnamese community, from crawfish to coffee and chicory, and some
subject matters that may be new to those of us born here.
“Sara
Roahen’s empathetic tales of time at table in New Orleans will break your heart
and rile your stomach,” writes John R. Edge, author of Southern Belly: The
Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South
“If you wish to understand why and how food matters in this papal city of
American cookery, trust her palate, trust her pen.”
Note:
Roahen explains in Gumbo Tales that
turducken could be the invention of the Hebert brothers of Maurice despite Chef
Paul Prudhomme introducing it to New Orleans, but sites a few sources that show
no one really knows for sure. She does, however, recommend visiting Acadiana’s
version.
“Whoever
made the first turducken, the Hebert brothers’ boneless chicken with spicy pork
stuffing is worth the two-and-a-half-hour drive from New Orleans to Maurice
with an ice chest; and whatever its origins, in spirit the turducken is 100
percent Chef Paul,” Roahen writes. |
Just when I’ve thought I’ve seen all of the classic photos
of the Crescent City comes Historic Photos of New Orleans by Melissa Lee Smith (Turner Publishing, $39.95).
Granted,
there must be hundreds if not thousands of photos of the famous city, but one
tends to see the same shots, if not subjects over and over again. Smith does
include well-known landmarks such as Aubudon Park, Canal Street and the French
Quarter, but her chosen photos tend to spotlight the underrepresented people
and places not usually found in history books.
For
instance, she includes African-American residents outside their homes in Tremé
and explains not only the significance of the area (the country’s oldest
African-American neighborhood) but also how Tremé changed with different
influxes of immigrants. Rex is shown arriving on Mardi Gras but shots of
children masking and minorities watching parades are also included. A photo of
the French Market features a group of butchers from the Gascon region of southwestern
France.
Other
impressive photos includes a long shot of the 1966 Mardi Gras crowd on Canal
Street, historic buildings that have since seen the wrecking ball or been lost
to fire, presidents who have visited the city, 9-year-old boys hawking newspapers,
Tulane football players in 1905 who only played one game against LSU, the
Higgins factory where boats used in the D-Day invasion were built and publicity
shots for the then-new housing developments created by F.D.R.’s New Deal.
Some
of the more poignant include a mother being given assistance by the Red Cross
during the flood of 1927 and an African-American man’s resigned face sitting
behind the “For Colored Patrons” sign on a city bus.
Smith
works for the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans and is currently completing
her M.A. in history from UNO, and many of her photos have been obtained from
the museum, Tulane University, the New Orleans Public Library and other local
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Sara Bongliorni
of Baton Rouge noticed one Christmas that all the toys littering her
livingroom had one thing in common: they were all made in China. So she
decided to experiment with the prospect of living a year without
anything made in the Asian country. The result was an entertaining and
thought-providing book, A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy (Wiley, $24.95).
“We couldn’t resist what China was selling,” Bongliorni writes in the
first chapter. “But on this dark afternoon, a creeping unease washes
over me as I sit on the sofa and survey the gloomy wreckage of the
holiday. It seems impossible to have missed it before, yet it isn’t
until now that I notice an irrefutable fact. China is taking over the
place.”
What’s refreshing about Bongliorni’s experiment is her
lack of political motives. She’s not making a statement about
economics, trade deficits or the emergence of a global power over
American consumerism. She merely shows how our shopping patterns have
changed over the last few decades and how very few American items are
manufactured anymore.
The book also clearly proves that only
Americans with middle class status or above can afford to be this
picky. Cheap goods sold in American stores, mostly big box
establishments like WalMart, are almost all made in China.
She
admits from day one that China corners the market on electronics, toys
and shoes and finding these items made in other countries might be
impossible, but Bongliorni discovers that so many other things, include
a massive amount of components, are made in China. She hits a wall, for
instance, when her printer runs out of ink and all the cartridges are
made in China and repairing her broken blender requires a new Chinese
blade.
She does find repair shops for vacuum cleaners, a lamp
created by one of the very few American existing lamp manufacturers and
an Italian-made shoe for her 4-year-old son, after weeks of searching.
In the end, though, she and her husband arrive back at Christmas and
find their gift selection remarkable slim.
Bongliorni’s
Chinese boycott doesn’t come without sneers and arguments from friends,
family and shopkeepers and tension develops between she and her husband
when the household is compromised. The result, however, is an
intriguing book that makes its reader want to turn over every object
she buys and discover if China is indeed taking over the American
marketplace. |
Our state is home to many unique American treasures, and architecture is one of them.
Creole Houses; Traditional Homes of Old Louisiana (Abrams. $35) by
John H. Lawrence, with photos by Steve Gross and Sue Daley, honors that
blend of French and Spanish influences in our state’s homes that were
built to withstand the heat, humidity and hurricanes.
The book
offers a beautiful and well-written examination of Louisiana by James
Conaway, author of The Big Easy, in its forward. Lawrence, director of
museum programs for the Historic New Orleans Collection, provides the
commentary.
The book opens with an exploration of Creole
architecture, its historical significance and origins and unique
characteristics. Lawrence describes Creole homes as “modest cottages,
grand town houses, raised cottages in rural locales, and narrow shotgun
houses — all share plans, materials and features meant to foster
comfort and ventilation in a hot, humid climate: high ceilings, a lack
of interior halls, shallow building depths, overhanging roofs,
galleries, shutters, French doors and casement windows, and foundations
set well above wet earth and potential floods.”
Furnishings are
mentioned as well, with imported goods and family heirlooms of the 18th
and 19th centuries standard items in Louisiana homes. The book
showcases many of these period pieces as it examines the inside of the
Creole homes.
The book is split into regions of the state: New
Orleans, River Road, Pointe Coupée, The Bayou Country and Natchitoches
and Cane River.
Lawrence does an excellent job of describing
both the homes’ history and the unique designs that earn them the title
of “Creole.” His commentary is well-flowing, easy to understand
Louisiana history. And the photographs of Gross and Daily are
absolutely stunning.
Creole Houses is one of those rare coffee table books you will devour from start to finish. |
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Spring 2008 Titles Am I imagining things or
Louisianans more prolific than
normal? Last year was a banner year for books by Louisiana authors and
this year is gearing up for more of the same.
Here are some books that
contain a local touch.
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Dottie L. Hudson compiled 20 years of her father’s diaries for a biography of Roland Q. Leavell titled He Still Stands Tall
(Pelican). Leavell served as a minister, evangelist, author and
president of the Baptist Bible Institute of New Orleans. His 1938 book,
Helping Others to Become Christians, sold 17,000 copies in four months
and he was unanimously elected the first vice president of the Southern
Baptist Convention.
Bruce T. Murray, a journalist and former
editor with the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register, as
well as a reporter in Lafayette, has written Religious Liberty in America: The First Amendment in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, an analysis of the relationship between religion and politics in American public life.
In
1959, A.J. Liebling covered Louisiana politics for the New Yorker and
ended up following Gov. Earl K. Long as he was committed to a mental
hospital. Liebling then published The Earl of Louisiana (LSU
Press) with a foreword by T. Harry Williams, who wrote the definitive
book on Huey Long. LSU Press has just issued an updated edition of
Liebling’s book with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winner
Jonathan Yardley.
Michael
Anthony has released his latest novel, Poppa Too (AuthorHouse), a true story of his daughter’s abduction, and Ed
Pickett of Rayville has published a collection of short stories about families
and friends titled True Stories at the Deer Camp and In the Woods (Rosedog Books, $11).
Mountain
Press Publishing has reissued the Roadside Geology of Louisiana by Darwin Spearing to accommodate the changing
coastline since its first edition in 1995. Spearing discusses wetland loss,
land subsidence and sediment building in the Atchafalaya and includes a brief
explanation of the two hurricanes of 2005. It’s interesting to note that at no
time was Louisiana’s geology constant.
Also
by Mountain Press is the Roadside History of Louisiana by Charles M. Robinson III, a book that covers the
state and all the fun things to view along the drive. I’m always wondering why
natives aren’t writing our travel books, but Texan Robinson does a good job
with only a few spots that I took exception with.
Rand
Dotson, senior acquisitions editor at LSU Press and an LSU history instructor,
has written Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South
(Univesrity of Tennessee Press).
Elizabeth
Dewey, environmental coordinator at Tulane, and Rodney Clark, a graduate of
Southern University and a retired supervisor with the Department of the
Interior of New Orleans, have edited Remember My Sacrifice: The
Autobiography of Clinton Clark, Tenant Farm Organizer and Early Civil Rights
Activists (LSU Press, $40).
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Winter 2007 TitlesAnd great holiday books to give as gifts...anytime!
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Gardening columnist Ann Justice has just published Blooming Trees
& Shrubs of the Coastal South: By Sequence of Bloom ($24.95). With gorgeous photographs and planting
guides, the book examines 74
flowering trees and shrubs in the area that is sometimes identified as
Hardiness Zones 8B through 9A. The book includes everything a gardening needs
to provide color in a coastal garden.
Holiday books:
For adults, there’s David C. Barnette’s Official Guide to Christmas in the
South: Or, If You Can’t Fry It, Spraypaint It Gold (HarperCollins, $14.95). Barnette hails from coastal Alabama and
consistently points out that no place celebrates Christmas like Dixie.
Coffee table books:
One of the biggest holiday surprises is New Orleans’ Favorite Shotguns by Mary Fitzpatrick and Alex Lemann and published by
the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center ($20 for members, $25 for
nonmembers). The petit rectangular book features 120 pages full of entertaining, heart-warming
stories by 50 narrators, 130 photographs by 55 photographers and lots of
shotgun history. Did you know, for instance, that New Orleans is home to 25,000
of these architectural types? And its origins is more intricate than people
realize.
Terra Incognita: Photographs of America’s Third Coast by Richard Sexton (Chronicle Books, $50) captures in brilliant black
and white photos both the haunting beauty and the fragility of the Gulf Coast,
from Florida to Louisiana bayous. New Orleans’ Sexton dedicates this
astonishing collection to the “ephemeral things in life, so defined because we
are aware they will not last.” A limited
edition of Terra Incognita will be available
through Sexton’s galleries and select booksellers and will include a
linen-covered clamshell case and an original signed quad tone pigment print of
the cover image for $400.
Along
those same lines is Earth to Earth: Art Inspired by Nature’s Design by photographer Martin Hill (Andrews McMeel,
$24.95), although Hill’s message is the cycle of life and regeneration, one he
hopes to see continued despite man’s assault on the earth. His photos capture
circles in nature, both original and created, in gorgeous assemblages, enhanced
by quotes from conservationalists.
Mr. Mardi Gras, Arthur Hardy, publisher of the annual Mardi Gras Guide, has created an illustrated history book titled Mardi
Gras in New Orleans (Arthur Hardy
Enterprises, $29.95). Not only does the book outline the history of Carnival in
Louisiana, but provides endless photos of Carnival memorabilia. There’s also a
handy Q&A section for those who reside outside Louisiana, and a listing of
krewes past and present for those who do.
Nonfiction:
Barry Jean Ancelet and Philip Gould combine
their writing-photography talents to document three decades of
Festivals Acadiens in One Generation at a Time: Biography of a Cajun and Creole Music Festival
(Center for Louisiana Studies, $20). The annual festival began as a
“Tribute to Cajun Music” in 1974, when organizers stressed over whether
Lafayette’s Blackham Coliseum would fill with spectators. The event, of
course, was successful and the rest is history, with the music
component of Festivals Acadiens becoming one of the most revered folk
music events in America. The book offers Gould’s always captivating
photos and festival write-ups of every year the music played, making
this the perfect gift to both lovers of Cajun and Creole music and the
festival as well. One Generation also documents the event as not only
preserving the music, but watching it grow. “A fundamental principle of
the festival is that tradition is not a fixed product but an ongoing
process — culture constantly evolves,” Ancelet writes. “To try to
prevent this is not only unwise, but impossible.”
Jennifer Anne
Moses suffered culture shock when she moved to Baton Rouge. Being an
East Coast Jew she found “mega-churches, giant white crosses looming
over the interstate, and people who think the ACLU is a satanic cult” a
bit alarming. But her memoir of the experience, Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou
(University of Wisconsin Press, $26.95), delves more into her spiritual
search for fulfillment in her own faith and her rich experience working
with AIDS patients with a blind passion for Jesus. With sarcasm and
humor Moses reaches for the divine and shares a remarkable journey in
the process.
James Cobb of Lafayette was led into a wild life of
drugs and crime with his father, spent time in jail and then penned his
incredible story. The result is No One Knows the Son, self
published by J&J Publishing House and available at Barnes &
Noble and Albertson’s. It’s a gripping tale of a harrowing life, one
that ends with redemption. Cobb now talks to prison youth in the hope
of turning their lives around.
LSU history titles:
Now in
paperback and revised is the tragic and notorious story of racial
injustice in Alabama, when two young white women accused nine black
teenagers of rape in 1931. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South
(LSU, $21.95) by Dan T. Carter offers extensive research, interviews of
the survivors and examines the long legal battle and public outcry that
ensued.
Other history books out now by the LSU Press include: In
The Footsteps of Grant and Lee: The Wilderness Through Cold Harbor by
Gordon S. Rhea with photos by Chris E. Heisey ($39.95), Fenians,
Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of
Reconstruction by Mitchell Snay ($40), Remember My Sacrifice: The
Autobiography of Clinton Clark, Tenant Farm Organizer and Early Civil
Rights Activist, edited by Elizabeth Davey and Rodney Clark ($40),
Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American
Public Policy, 1821–1860 by Paul F. Paskoff ($48), Rituals of
Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South
in the Era of Slavery by Jason R. Young ($40), University Builder:
Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute by John B.
Boles ($35), Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America: Expanding
the Orbit of Scottish Culture by Elaine G. Breslaw ($55), and Texas
Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the
Lower South by Donald E. Reynolds ($45).
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Robin Roberts is a real success story. After spending her childhood in Pass Christian and attending Southeastern in Hammond on a sports scholarship, Roberts went into broadcasting, first for ESPN, then as co-anchor of Good Morning America.
She credits seven rules for her success in life and they are part of her new book, From the Heart: Seven Rules to Live By (Hyperion, $19.95).
The rules aren’t groundbreaking; some of the seven include “focus on the solution, not the problem” and “venture outside your comfort zone.” But her down-to-earth style of writing is refreshing. And although the rules may be things we’ve heard before, the stories Roberts offers to back them up are simple and heart-warming and reflect feelings and experiences readers can identify with.
For instance, in “Dream big, but focus small,” Roberts relates how she was awarded a scholarship to LSU and was thrilled to be attending the school until she took a trip to Baton Rouge and visited the mammoth college. Heartbroken and afraid to tell her friends and family she couldn’t hack such a large school, she deterred off I-10 on the way back to Mississippi, stopping in Hammond and finding the perfect college.
Roberts is also the sister of Sally-Ann Roberts, a New Orleans anchor, and there is lots of local color in her small but powerful book. It’s also an easy read, making it the perfect gift for someone graduating, needing a little confidence boost to set them off on the right foot.
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Louisiana mentioned in ‘Amazing Places to Live’
Today Show real estate contributor Barbara Corcoran gives Louisiana a mention as a retirement destination in her latest book, Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life (Springboard
Press). New Orleans is listed as one of the “best places to find your
purpose” as an entrepreneur or business mentor working to help rebuild
the city.
“On top of that,” Corcoran writes, “you’ll be in one of the most stimulating places on earth.” It’s also interesting to note that New Orleans has 216 sunny days per year as opposed to Nova Scotia clocking in at 83.
For those looking to leave the state once Social Security arrives,
there are plenty of places to choose from, along with good explanations
why. |
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