La Louisiane
What different meanings have been associated with the term “creole” in Louisiana? In what ways does the history of the creole de couleur community in 18th- and 19th-century Louisiana reflect changing attitudes about race and racial categories? To what extent did members of this community feel themselves to be French? To be American?
Who are the Cajuns? How might a consideration of their history complicate our understanding of “whiteness” in the United States? What roles do language and class play in the articulation of Cajun culture? How does French Catholicism figure into the identity of the Cajuns as a minority culture within the United States?
How are racial categories represented in poetry and fiction produced by writers associated with Louisiana? To what extent do they challenge American narratives of freedom and equality? What forms of cultural resistance and/or assimilation do they reflect? How does Naudin’s rewriting of a formative French text frame the stakes of resistance in Louisiana? How do European-American writers like Cable and Chopin depict the complexity of Cajun and Creole identities?
Creole Girls, Palquemines Parish, Louisiana, Ben Shahn (1935)
Reading Guides for Primary Readings:
Desdunes, selections from Our People and Our History: Fifty Creole Portraits
Lanusse, “A Marriage of Conscience”
Castra, “The Campaign of 1814-1815”
Séjour, “The Mulatto”
Naudin, “The Black Marseillaise: Song of Peace”
Cable, “The Story of Bras-Coupé” from The Grandissimes
Chopin, “Désirée’s Baby”
Homework: