excerpt from cajuns book

It's funny to read about your own hometown areas written as though it's a tribe in some remote country. But check it out… this was written in the seventies, and I'd say it's still pretty accurate.

*Sniff* Makes me homesick. While I don't want anyone visiting me daily, I do want to be able to visit others daily! Just give me a cup of coffee strong enough to make me ill and let's talk about the gossip of my fifth cousins. If you're not from LA, THIS is why Pueblo isn't home for me.

Allain, Mathé. "Twentieth-Century Acadians." The Cajuns: Essays on Their History and Culture. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1978. 129-41.

"Despite the enormous amount of change in Acadiana today, a great deal remains unchanged. Technology has affected physical things but left social patterns and institutions largely untouched. Religion, the Roman Catholic Church, remains an all-important factor in Acadian lives. The young Acadians still largely attend Catholic schools and, whatever their rebellion against the good sisters or the priests during adolescence, seldom stray far from Catholic practices. Sunday masses are packed (though it is now several years since I have seen men go out for a smoke during the sermon) and ecclesiastical gossip still provides much of the conversation over a beer or a cup of coffee.

Family life has remained largely unchanged. Acadian life still revolves around a closely knit, extended family characterized by both physical and emotional closeness. The family members usually reside near one another. In one family I know, each of the eight sons and daughters visits the elderly parents once a day when all is well, more if the mother is ailing. Young Acadians seldom move from the native village, often building their first home, or setting up a mobile home, in the parents' backyard…

Families, moreover, visit constantly. Sunday is typically spent dropping in on relatives, and any holiday or anniversary will do as an excuse for a family reunion with beer-filled ice chests and food-laden tables. The contacts are frequent not only between parents and children, but among all relatives, [aunt, uncle,] and the innumerable [cousins].

…Acadians are [often] known affectionately to everyone by a nickname… received in early childhood. It often so completely supplants their real name that no one remembers what they were christened. In the little town of Breaux Bridge, the phone book lists the nicknames along with the given names, since no one would ever look for "Bubba" Hebert under the listing "Charles Hebert." Theose nicknames are often most unusual in that they commonly include names that would normally be insults, such as "Neg." Only in Louisiana would one see political posters proclaiming "Nookie for Sheriff"!

The Acadian family, even in the late seventies, follows traditional organization with well-defined male and female roles: each has his or her sphere of activities and the apparent crossovers follow socially acceptable patterns… Men will cook—Acadian men, in fact, rightly pride themselves on their culinary skills—but will not scrub floors or change diapers.

Men and women have their sphere of power also, and the strict role definition does not mean that Acadian women are dominated, submissive, or compliant! Far from it. Acadian women represent a formidable power within the family and have shown through the years that they can take over… if necessary" (139-40).