Voices from Louisiana

Voices from Louisiana
Author: Ann Brewster Dobie
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2018-03-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0807168939

Voices from Louisiana provides thoughtful, timely profiles of some of the state’s most highly regarded and popular contemporary authors. Readers interested in Louisiana’s rich literary tradition will appreciate these evocative essays on writers whose works emanate from the cultures and landscapes of the Gulf South. Ann Brewster Dobie explores the works of eleven well-known authors and concludes with a look at several emerging talents. These writers work in a broad range of genres, from coming-of-age stories and historical narratives that recover the voices of silenced and oppressed peoples, to crime thrillers set in New Iberia and New Orleans, to poetic invocations of the natural world and narratives capturing the realities of working-class lives. Whether native to the state or transplants, these writers produce works that reflect the vibrant culture that defines the intricate literary landscape of the Pelican State. Dobie highlights the careers of Darrell Bourque, James Lee Burke, Ernest Gaines, Tim Gautreaux, Shirley Ann Grau, Greg Guirard, William Joyce, Julie Kane, Tom Piazza, Martha Serpas, and James Wilcox. Newcomers also profiled include Wiley Cash, Ashley Mace Havird, Anne L. Simon, Katy Simpson Smith, Ashley Weaver, Steve Weddle, and Ken Wheaton.

Voices of the Enslaved

Voices of the Enslaved
Author: Sophie White
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469654059

In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded. Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they testified, these individuals charted their movement between West African, indigenous, and colonial cultures; they pronounced their moral and religious values; and they registered their responses to labor, to violence, and, above all, to the intimate romantic and familial bonds they sought to create and protect. Their words--punctuated by the cadences of Creole and rich with metaphor--produced riveting autobiographical narratives as they veered from the questions posed by interrogators. Carefully assessing what we can discover, what we might guess, and what has been lost forever, Sophie White offers both a richly textured account of slavery in French Louisiana and a powerful meditation on the limits and possibilities of the archive.

Voices from an Early American Convent

Voices from an Early American Convent
Author: Emily Clark
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2009-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0807142492

In 1727, twelve nuns left France to establish a community of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Notable for founding a school that educated all free girls, regardless of social rank, the Ursulines also ran an orphanage, administered the colony's military hospital, and sustained an aggressive program of catechesis among the enslaved population of colonial Louisiana. In Voices from an Early American Convent, Emily Clark extends the boundaries of early American women's history through the firsthand accounts of these remarkable French missionaries, in particular Marie Madeleine Hachard. These fascinating documents reveal women of determination, courage, and conviction, who chose to forgo the traditional European roles of wife and mother, embrace lives of public service, and forge a community among the diverse inhabitants -- enslaved and free -- who occupied early New Orleans.

Voices from Colonial America: Louisiana, 1682-1803 (Direct Mail Edition)

Voices from Colonial America: Louisiana, 1682-1803 (Direct Mail Edition)
Author: Richard Worth
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780792265443

Provides a comprehensive guide to the history of Louisiana, its diverse people, and the impact the purchase of this state from the French has had on the United States, complete with period maps and first-person accounts.

My Louisiana Sky

My Louisiana Sky
Author: Kimberly Willis Holt
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2011-02-15
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 142999102X

Tiger Ann Parker wants nothing more than to get out of the rural town of Saitter, Louisiana--far away from her mentally disabled mother, her "slow" father who can't read an electric bill, and her classmates who taunt her. So when Aunt Dorie Kay asks Tiger to sp the summer with her in Baton Rouge, Tiger can't wait to go. But before she leaves, the sudden revelation of a dark family secret prompts Tiger to make a decision that will ultimately change her life. Set in the South in the late 1950s, this coming-of-age novel explores a twelve-year-old girl's struggle to accept her grandmother's death, her mentally deficient parents, and the changing world around her. It is a novel filled with beautiful language and unforgettable characters, and the importance of family and home. My Louisiana Sky is a 1998 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award Honor Book for Fiction.

Mr. New Orleans

Mr. New Orleans
Author: Matthew Randazzo V
Publisher: Mrv Entertainment LLC
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692237489

Wiseguys called him "the Keith Richards of the American Mafia" and JFK hero Jim Garrison denounced him as "one of the most notorious vice operators in the history of New Orleans" ... but you can just call him MR. NEW ORLEANS. Mr. New Orleans tells the incredible story of Frenchy Brouillette, a redneck Cajun teenager who stole his big brother's motorcycle and embarked on a 60-year vacation to New Orleans, where he became a legendary gangster and the underworld political fixer for his cousin, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Written by Crescent City native Matthew Randazzo V, the wickedly funny Mr. New Orleans is the first book to ever break the code of secrecy of the New Orleans Mafia Family, the oldest and most mysterious criminal secret society in America. "Mr. New Orleans is a rollicking, disturbing ride through the underbelly of a bygone New Orleans, lined with moments of dark, side-splitting hilarity. If you're a fan of James Lee Burke, drop what you're reading and pick this one up. In an era when popular wisdom tells us T.V. has stolen all depth from the literary true-crime narrative, Matthew Randazzo has found a way to beat that trend mightily; he's gone straight to the source and captured the singular, confounding voice of the New Orleans' mafia's top political fixer with fast-paced, riveting prose and a fine journalist's eye for detail." Chris Rice, New York Times Bestselling Author "Mr. New Orleans is a total knockout: Take everything you ever imagined about the sleazy good times to be had in New Orleans -- the sleazy good times capital of America -- and quadruple it, and you have a hint of what's inside these sticky pages." Bill Tonelli, Author of The Italian American Reader and Editor for Esquire and Rolling Stone

Louisiana Saturday Night

Louisiana Saturday Night
Author: Alex V. Cook
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2012-03-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807144568

From backwoods bars and small-town dives to swampside dance halls and converted clapboard barns, Louisiana Saturday Night offers an anecdotal history and experiential guidebook to some of the Gumbo State's most unique blues, Cajun, and zydeco clubs. Music critic Alex V. Cook uncovers south Louisiana's wellspring of musical tradition, showing us that indigenous music exists not as an artifact to be salvaged by preservationists, but serves as a living, breathing, singing, laughing, and crying part of Louisiana culture. Louisiana Saturday Night takes the reader to both offbeat and traditional venues in and around Baton Rouge, Cajun country, and New Orleans, where we hear the distinctive voices of musicians, patrons, and owners -- like Teddy Johnson, born in the house that now serves as Teddy's Juke Joint. Along the way, Cook ruminates on the cultural importance of the people and places he encounters, and shows their critical role in keeping Louisiana's unique music alive. A map, a journal, a snapshot of what goes on in the little shacks off main roads, Louisiana Saturday Night provides an indispensable and entertaining companion for those in pursuit of Louisiana's quirky and varied nightlife.

New Orleans Music Observed

New Orleans Music Observed
Author: Emilie Rhys
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781737413868

This richly illustrated volume documents in detail the exhibition "New Orleans Music Observed: The Art of Noel Rockmore and Emilie Rhys" at the New Orleans Jazz Museum from January 30, 2020 to September 1, 2021, curated by the museum's own David Kunian and expanded upon in this book by Emilie Rhys (wearing several hats as contributing artist, contributing writer, co-editor, photo editor, layout designer, and publisher). Noel Rockmore, well-known in New Orleans for his mid-1960s oil portraits of Preservation Hall musicians, and his daughter Emilie Rhys, whose artwork of contemporary musicians all around town has gained her recent public notice, are brought together for their first joint exhibition in which a selection of their drawings and paintings is paired with a wide variety of artifacts and historic instruments, culled mostly from the Jazz Museum's incomparable archives. As the curator of this profusely illustrated book, Emilie Rhys not only provides a visual record of the exhibition, she expands upon it through the presentation of significant new material by several Louisiana natives who are close observers of the vibrant cultural life that makes New Orleans a veritable global magnet. They are novelist, journalist, and art collector John Ed Bradley; print and public radio journalist Gwen Thompkins; and scientist and art collector Myles Robichaux. For the lead chapter in this book, Bradley has written the first ever literary exploration of the intertwined lives of Rockmore and Rhys, "Picture in a Picture: Noel Rockmore and Emilie Rhys in New Orleans." In Chapter 3, Robichaux's original essay speaks to the profound impact on him of discovering Rockmore's art in 2002 and meeting Rhys in 2011. For Chapter 4, "Depiction/Being Depicted," Thompkins conducted interviews in 2020 with 14 musicians exploring their interest in visual art, their thoughts about the development of their own image, and how they feel about their image appearing in drawings, paintings, and photographs by visual artists. The book has 368 illustrations including 302 in full color, a large number of which have never been seen in public previously and have been selected by Rhys, many from her extensive personal archives.