Legacy Of A Creole Treasure

How many times have you heard someone in your family tell stories about olden days and about your ancestors' lives that are inconceivable to imagine and you wondered if those stories were true? If you are curious to research those stories - your ancestors - sometimes, you may find many embellishments to those stories. Sometimes, you will run into dead-ends, and then, as in my case, you will find the family stories told over and over are just the beginning of a tale. When you research, if you research your ancestors, as I did maybe you too will find the "tale" is a wonderful saga, which may explain why you are who you are and the characters of it are your ancestors.

Who are the Creoles? The answer is not clear-cut. Of European, African, or Caribbean mixed descent, they are a people of color and Francophone dialect native to south Louisiana; and though their history dates from the late 1600s, they have been sorely neglected in the literature. Creole is a project that both defines and celebrates this ethnic identity. In fifteen essays, writers intimately involved with their subject explore the vibrant yet understudied culture of the Creole people across time—their language, literature, religion, art, food, music, folklore, professions, customs, and social barriers.

The word Creole evokes a richness rivaled only by the term's widespread misunderstanding. Now both aspects of this unique people and culture are given thorough, illuminating scrutiny in Creole, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary history of Louisiana's Creole population. Written by scholars, many of Creole descent, the volume wrangles with the stuff of legend and conjecture while fostering an appreciation for the Creole contribution to the American mosaic. The collection opens with a historically relevant perspective found in Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson's 1916 piece "People of Color of Louisiana" and continues with contemporary writings: Joan M. Martin on the history of quadroon balls; Michel Fabre and Creole expatriates in France; Barbara Rosendale Duggal with a debiased view of Marie Laveau; Fehintola Mosadomi and the downtrodden roots of Creole grammar; Anthony G. Barthelemy on skin color and racism as an American legacy; Caroline Senter on Reconstruction poets of political vision; and much more. Violet Harrington Bryan, Lester Sullivan, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Sybil Kein, Mary Gehman, Arthi A. Anthony, and Mary L. Morton offer excellent commentary on topics that range from the lifestyles of free women of color in the nineteenth century to the Afro-Caribbean links to Creole cooking. By exploring the vibrant yet marginalized culture of the Creole people across time, Creole goes far in diminishing past and present stereotypes of this exuberant segment of our society. A study that necessarily embraces issues of gender, race and color, class, and nationalism, it speaks to the tensions of an increasingly ethnically mixed mainstream America.

The fourth volume of the acclaimed series captures in more than 400 photographs and text the distinctive architecture of the six creole faubourgs, or neighborhoods, of the modern city of New Orleans. As in all books in the series, emphasis is placed on historic documentation, with a goal of preserving important structures. Twelve distinct architectural types germane to the faubourgs are defined, identified, and analyzed. Also included is a chapter on the craftsmanship of the many free persons of color who contributed significantly to the city's architecture. Researched by The Friends of the Cabildo, one of the nation's leading preservation organizations, the oversize volume was compiled by Roulhac Toledano, Sally Evans, and Mary Louise Christovich, all of New Orleans. A history of the faubourgs by Samuel Wilson, Jr. is featured as well. The books photographs, both color and black and white, were the work of Betsy Swanson, photographer for the first three volumes of the series.

Translated and Edited by Sister Dorothea Olga McCants, Daughter of the Cross In Our People and Our History, originally published in French in 1911 and translated into English in 1973, Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes records the lives of fifty prominent Creoles who lived in New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century. Although he received little formal education, Desdunes -- himself a Creole -- was an articulate observer of his times and culture. His portraits of black doctors, lawyers, teachers, musicians, artists, and writers are powerful evidence of the extraordinary role that Creoles played in the cultural and political history of Louisiana.

The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "Little by little, the bird makes its nest." - Old Haitian Creole Proverb Vibrant, up-tempo vocals and exquisitely soulful harmonies paired with an accordion-heavy and drum-tastic blend of folksy and bluesy instrumentals that one cannot help but tap one's foot to. Rich and creamy, ultra-seasoned bisques. Flavorful, aromatic gumbos packed with tomatoes, smoked sausages, chicken, and shellfish. A heavenly concoction of stewed rice and an assortment of meats and seafood, enlivened with tomatoes, celery, onions, and peppers, otherwise known as "red jambalaya." Striking paintings featuring bright pops of color and featureless silhouettes of men, women, and children with varying shades of brown skin. These are often the first sounds, scents, tastes, and visuals evoked when the word "Creole" is brought up in a conversation. Contrary to popular belief, the term "Creole" is not restricted to the Louisiana Creole, nor the Creoles of color, which collectively refers to the overall ethnic group and different local Creole cultures that blossomed across the Spanish and French colonies in Louisiana, Mississippi, and northwestern Florida. Today, the term is much more complex and may be applied to any of the various Creole cultures around the globe. The word may also be used to describe any language that has spawned from a mixture of languages, or specifically the associated, but distinct tongues developed within Creole communities, as well as the speakers of these languages themselves. Generally speaking, however, the word "Creole" refers to the cultures birthed from the colonial-era racial and cultural mixing between Europeans (mostly of French, Spanish, or Portuguese descent) and Africans, as well as Native Americans, and other local or indigenous peoples in French, Spanish, and Portuguese territories. The merging of the above-mentioned heritages is a process now known as "creolization." Indeed, the image of a caramel-skinned individual with a combination of Afrocentric, Native American, and Caucasian physical features falls within the extensive realm of "Creole culture," but it is important to remember that the Creole peoples come in all complexions, shapes, and sizes, ranging from darker skin coupled with predominantly "African" traits and virtually no visible signs of European ancestry, to sets of blue or green eyes set amongst other ambiguously "Caucasian" characteristics. Beige-skinned individuals sculpted with an assortment of Spanish and Southeast Asian features, as seen in many of the Filipino Creole, also belong to the same category. The Creoles: The History and Legacy of Some of the Americas' Most Unique Ethnic Groups profiles the people, from their origins to their histories across the Americas. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Creoles like never before.

"Creole poets have always eluded easy definition, infusing European poetic forms with Louisiana themes and Native American and African influences to produce an impressive variety of highly accomplished verses. The first major collection of its kind, Creole Echoes contains over a hundred of these poems by more than thirty different poets, presented by M. Lynn Weiss in their original French alongside new English translations by Norman R. Shapiro.The poems gathered here were all composed in French by Louisiana residents of European, African, and Caribbean origin. Their themes range from love and history to nightmare and childhood recollection. In these pages somber elegies meet whimsical surprises, and rhyming animal fables meet political panegyrics. "

Creolization describes the cultural adaptations that occur when a community moves to a new geographic setting. Exploring the consciousness of peoples defined as "creoles" who moved from the Old World to the New World, this collection of eighteen original essays investigates the creolization of literary forms and genres in the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas facilitates a cross-disciplinary, intrahemispheric, and Atlantic comparison of early settlers' colonialism and creole elites' relation to both indigenous peoples and imperial regimes. Contributors explore literatures written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English to identify creole responses to such concepts as communal identity, local patriotism, nationalism, and literary expression. The essays take the reader from the first debates about cultural differences that underpinned European ideologies of conquest to the transposition of European literary tastes into New World cultural contexts, and from the natural science discourse concerning creolization to the literary manifestations of creole patriotism. The volume includes an addendum of etymological terms and critical bibliographic commentary. Contributors: Ralph Bauer, University of Maryland Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, City University of New York Lucia Helena Costigan, Ohio State University Jim Egan, Brown University Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame Carlos Jauregui, Vanderbilt University Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel, University of Pennsylvania Jose Antonio Mazzotti, Tufts University Stephanie Merrim, Brown University Susan Scott Parrish, University of Michigan Luis Fernando Restrepo, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Jeffrey H. Richards, Old Dominion University Kathleen Ross, New York University David S. Shields, University of South Carolina Teresa A. Toulouse, Tulane University Lisa Voigt, University of Chicago Jerry M. Williams, West Chester University

Louisiana is known for its rich, complex cultural heritage, but even in Louisiana, the question "What is a Creole?" is often answered in a number of ways. In Creoles of Louisiana, George Washington Cable knowledgeably addresses this question with precision and aplomb. Originally published in 1884, Creoles of Louisiana builds on earlier explorations of the lives of the white descendants of early French and Spanish immigrants during the transitory post-Civil War period. Cable wrote faithful portrayals of the Creoles, with a pioneering ear for the dialect that earned him an acclaimed place as a leader of the local colorist movement. From the early settlement of Louisiana, to the trials of the War Between the States, to the yellow fever epidemic, and on to "Brighter Skies," the chapters chronicle the Creoles' experience in the Pelican state. New Orleans emerges as a town carved out of the wilderness of the bayou, and together, city and citizens flourished.