History -- Southern Studies
The past sixty years have shaped and reshaped the group of
French-speaking Louisiana people known as the Cajuns. During this
period they have become much like other Americans and yet have
remained strikingly distinct. "The Cajuns: Americanization of a
People" explores these six decades and analyzes the forces that had
an impact on Louisiana's Acadiana.
In the 1940s, when America entered World War II, so too did the
isolated Cajuns. Cajun soldiers fought alongside troops from
Brooklyn and Berkeley and absorbed aspects of new cultures. In the
1950s as rock 'n' roll and television crackled across Louisiana
airwaves, Cajun music makers responded with their own distinct
versions. In the 1960s, empowerment and liberation movements turned
the South upside down. During the 1980s, as things Cajun became an
absorbing national fad, "Cajun" became a kind of brand identity
used for selling everything from swamp tours to boxed rice dinners.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the advent of a new
information age launched "Cyber-Cajuns" onto a worldwide web. All
these forces have pushed and pulled at the fabric of Cajun life but
have not destroyed it.
A Cajun himself, the author of this book has an intense personal
fascination in his people.
By linking seemingly local events in the Cajuns' once isolated
south Louisiana homeland to national and even global events,
Bernard demonstrates that by the middle of the twentieth century
the Cajuns for the first time in their ethnic story were engulfed
in the currents of mainstream American life and yet continued to
make outstandingly distinct contributions.
Shane K. Bernard serves as historian and curator to McIlhenny
Company, maker of Tabasco brand products since 1868, and Avery
Island, Inc. He is the author of "Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole
Rhythm and Blues" (University Press of Mississippi). His work has
been published in such periodicals as "Louisiana History,"
"Louisiana Folklife," "Louisiana Cultural Vistas," and the "New
Orleans Times-Picayune."
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