Viola Fontenot grew up the daughter of a sharecropper in southwestern Louisiana where life was difficult for the family but joyous in many ways. She writes about both experiences in "A Cajun Girl's Sharecropping Years." explaining working as a child in the fields, living without electricity, and driving a mule into town but also the Cajun children's games she played, the house dances with family and friends and her undying love of Cajun music. It's a small book with a powerful story offering great insight to growing up on the Cajun Prairie.
Fontenot is also the contributor to "Growing Up in South Louisiana" and is currently working on a children's book titled "Le Petit Chaoui Du Grand Bois," about her childhood pet raccoon.
George T. Malvaney loved to disappear as a child, driving his parents crazy. The writing was on the wall. The Mississippi native joined the navy and started a Klan group that resulted in a mutual discharge, then he planned an armed coup attempt on Dominica in the Caribbean. The FBI caught up with him and landed him in jail, and that’s where he turned his life around to become a leader of the Mississippi cleanup effort of the Gulf Coast after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It’s all part of Malvaney’s wild memoir, “Cups Up: How I Organized a Klavern, Plotted a Coup, Survived Prison, Graduated College, Fought Polluters, and Started a Business.” Today, the author is a partner at Enhanced Environmental and Emergency Series and Malvaney and Associates.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said of the book, “The hardships of George’s youth did not define him. Rather, his determination to overcome those unfortunate circumstances makes his story one of redemption. I am glad he is sharing it.”
Ann Brewster Dobie, professor emerita of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, examines 11 well-known Louisiana authors and several on the rise in “Voices from Louisiana: Profiles of Contemporary Writers.” The authors highlighted in her book include former Louisiana Poet Laureate 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 profiled include Wiley Cash, Ashley Mace Havird, Anne L. Sion, Katy Simpson Smith, Ashley Weaver, Steve Weddle and Ken Wheaton.
Dobie is also the author of “Something in Common: Contemporary Louisiana Stories,” “Uncommonplace: An Anthology of Contemporary Louisiana Poets” and “Wide Awake in the Pelican State: Stories by Contemporary Louisiana Writers.”
A gorgeous, massive book that looks beyond the debutantes and New Orleans’ elite society is “Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans” by Howard Philips Smith. Gay krewes began in the late 1950s in New Orleans, Smith asserts, many times celebrated in secret, but by the 1980s were almost eliminated by the AIDS crisis and persecution. The book contains krewe interviews, photographs, ephemera, ball costumes, posters, programs and more.
"In Unveiling the Muse, Howard Philips Smith presents a lively and comprehensive history of New Orleans's gay Carnival organizations formed in the post-World War II era,” writes Priscilla Lawrence, executive director of The Historic New Orleans Collection. “In addition, he takes a wider look at the places, people, and non-Carnival annual calendar of events that are allied with it. His use of archival sources, both public and private, enhances the narrative and adds a stunning visual element to the history of the krewes, clubs, and society that has defined and transformed gay Carnival in New Orleans for over half a century."
Smith grew up on a farm in rural Mississippi and attended the University of Southern Mississippi and the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon. He began writing about pre-AIDS New Orleans and the gay ball scene during the early 1980s, the so-called Golden Age of Gay Carnival. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and three cats.
Published in the spring was “Discovering Cat island: Photographs and History” by John Cuevas with photographs by Jason Taylor and a foreword by Delbert Hosemann, Mississippi Secretary of State.
“Cat Island is truly one of Mississippi’s greatest natural resources,” Hosemann writes in the foreword. “This barrier island is rich in history, dating back to its discovery by the French in 1699. Our island has survived centuries of changes in ownership and tropical storms. It is a part of the culture of Mississippi and remains a jewel of the Gulf Coast.”
Cuevas served as creative director of his own advertising firm in Atlanta for more than 25 years, where he won gold awards in radio, television and print advertising. Taylor is an artist, photographer and environmentalist whose work is inspired by his passion for the outdoors and Mississippi Gulf Coast.
For information about these and other University Press of Mississippi titles, click
here.
Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.
Alexander Books of Lafayette, a wonderful bookshop that sells mostly used but some new books and includes a number of adorable cats, continues its Stories Matter reading series tonight. The live reading event features short story writer and Ph.D. student of creative writing Joe Worthen, poet Carol Rice and yours truly, Chere Coen (although I'll be reading works from books under my pen name of Cherie Claire.) In addition to the spoken word, there will be wine, good conversation, book browsing and cats.
