Cane River (Oprah's Book Club)

Customer Reviews:

Great first book, just Great book!.......2007-10-03

I'm loving this book. It isn't in a hurry to be told, and the overlapping
4 parts are beautifully knit and woven into a wonderful family history.
This is not your usual "I was born a poor black slave" story.
It's vibrant, and exciting, and paints layers of character in each generation.
It is tragic without being a tragedy. It's a story well told.
Something to pass on and be proud of.
Excellent job, Lalita

Couldn't put it down.......2007-09-25

I have about 10-12 more pages to read of this book.. I couldn't put it down since the first day I received it... love it, love it.. I will be making a purchase of another one of her books... and the pics in the inside are awesom. This makes me want to seriously find out about my own family history. Lalita you go grrl..

Cane River is an excellent book! Read it, buy it!.......2007-08-18

This was a very interesting look into the criminal system that slavery was in 19th century America. It's not just about abuse, betrayal, unfairness, and generations of oppression, it's about the overcoming quality of the human spirit. These women and their families lived through the second-largest human catastrophe in American history (following abortion)and they perservered. The perpetrators (owners and their families) were a sad but brutal lot. I cannot understand how one man can hold another in chains and expect the imprisioned man to be content and thankful for that horrendous experience. Read this book. It is outstanding.

Generations of Slavery.......2007-08-09

Lalita Tademy, the author of this story, became intrigued by her own lineage. She investigated and found she could trace her past back through several strong and charismatic women, some of whom were living as slaves in Louisiana. She used these facts to spin a fiction based on the real and imagined lives of these women and their families.

I thought this book was a good look at the day-to-day lives of slaves and plantation owners before the Civil War, then at the lives that blacks and whites lived shortly after slavery was abolished.

I found, though, that this book didn't have as much of an emotional impact on me as I had expected. The characters are raped, they bear children who are born into slavery, and their loved ones are sold away with no hope of reunion. These things should have been profoundly moving, but I found the author's style to be a bit dispassionate. As a result I just didn't feel as invested in these characters and their stories as I could have.

Wonderful book.......2007-08-06

This is an incredible book! I never wanted to put it down because I felt so intimately involved in the details of the lives of these women. Its an embarrassing chapter in American History that was brought to life with courage and skillful writing. Its difficult to believe that this was Tademy's first attempt at writing a book.

Average customer rating:

A Very Enjoyable Read
creoles
Beautiful story...
Very Engaging
A Mesmerizing Page-Turner!

Cane River (Oprah's Book Club)
Lalita Tademy
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Family Saga | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mothers & Children | Women's Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Red River
Drowning Ruth (Oprah's Book Club)
Black and Blue (Oprah's Book Club)
The Rapture of Canaan
While I Was Gone (Oprah's Book Club)

ASIN: 0446678457

Product Description

Cane River (Oprahs Book Club)

Amazon.com

Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.

The author makes it clear exactly where these prohibitions came from. Plantation society was rigidly hierarchical, after all, particularly on the heels of the Civil War and the economic hardships that came with Reconstruction. The only permissible path upward for hard-working, ambitious African Americans was indirect. A meteoric rise, or too obvious an appearance of prosperity, would be swiftly punished. To enable the slow but steady advance of their clan, the black women of Cane River plot, plead, deceive, and manipulate their way through history, extracting crucial gifts of money and property along the way. In the wake of a visit from the 1880 census taker, the aged Elisabeth reflects on how far they had come.

When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew.

In her introduction, Tademy explains that as a young woman, she failed to appreciate the love and reverence with which her mother and her four uncles spoke of their lively Grandma 'Tite (short for "Mademoiselle Petite"). She resented her great-grandmother's skin-color biases, which were as much a part of Tademy's memory as were her great-grandmother's trademark dance moves. But the old stories haunted the author, and armed with a couple of pages of history compiled by a distant Louisiana cousin, she began to piece together a genealogy. The result? Tademy eventually left her position as vice president of a Fortune 500 company and set to work on Cane River, in which she has deftly and movingly reconstructed the world of her ancestors. --Regina Marler

Customer Reviews:

A Very Enjoyable Read.......2007-09-17

Cane River is a reconstruction of historical events during slavery in the 1800s. Ms. Tademy added well written fiction to fill in the gaps. The book is about four generations of women and their determination for survival for their families. The book is written into three chapters of three of the women.

Ms. Tademy writes about forbidden love, betrayal and how these women fight for their identity in a world that sees them as less than human.

When I first started reading this book it moved slow and some parts were troubling to me but I'm glad I kept reading the book.

creoles.......2007-08-29

Really enjoyed this book. I loved the combination of fact and fiction and the famliy photos. It flowed well and was interesting. It's amazing how times have changed and how racist this country was and is.

Beautiful story..........2007-08-06

This book captivates you from the beginning to end. I am not a fan of "historical" books because I usually find them boring! But I took a chance with this one and I was left speechless. This book haunted me for days, I kept thinking about the characters and what they experienced. The author wrote the book so beautifully...it's a must read. This book has made me proud to be an African-American, because I know I come from a lineage of strong Black women!

Very Engaging.......2007-08-02

I loved this story the entire way through. The fact that it is based on real people and real events gives it an extra added sense of fascination. I read a lot of historical fiction, and this book is one of the better ones in the list of my reads. It really gave me a sense of what the world looked like for slaves, and freed slaves. Very Engaging the entire way through.

A Mesmerizing Page-Turner!.......2007-07-18

I was looking for a very enjoyable, readable and engaging book, and I found it! You will love the characters, the history and the insight this book has to offer, and you won't be able to put it down. Enjoy.

Average customer rating:

Didn't want the stories to end!!!
Cane River
Read it in one day!
Very Good Book
Beth Gray's interracialvoice.com Commentary on "Cane River"

Cane River
Lalita Tademy
Manufacturer: Warner Books> C/o Little Br
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mothers & Children | Women's Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Red River
Cane River (Oprah's Book Club)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel
March

ASIN: 0446527327
Release Date: 2001-04-17

Amazon.com

When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew.

Book Description

Lalita Tademy was a successful corporate vice president at a Fortune 500 company when she decided to embark upon what would become an obsessive odyssey to uncover her familys past. Through exhaustive research, interviews, and the help of professional genealogists, she would find herself transported back to the early 1800s, to an isolated, close-knit rural community on Louisianas Cane River. Here, Tademy takes historical fact and mingles it with fiction to weave a vivid and dramatic account of what life was like for the four remarkable women who came before her. Beginning with Tademys great-great-great-great grandmother Elisabeth, this is a family saga that sweeps from the early days of slavery through the Civil War into a pre-Civil Rights Southa unique and moving slice of Americas past that will resonate with readers for generations to come. Well-researched and powerfully written, Cane River is just the kind of family portrait that will appeal to the same diverse audience as Alex Haleys bestselling phenomenon Roots (Dell Books, reissue 1980) and the New York Times bestseller Sally Hemings (Buccaneer Books, 1992), which sold over one million hardcover copies and inspired the feature film Jefferson in Paris, starring Nick Nolte and Thandie Newton.

Customer Reviews:

Didn't want the stories to end!!!.......2007-07-08

I recently finished this book and was blown away at how attached I found myself becoming to the characters! This novel tells the story of three generations of African-American women beginning from before the civil war and ending in the Depression era, all fighting to break the bonds and stigmas of slavery. This story tells of their loves, struggles, families, deaths and births and how each moment impacted them and future generations. Each woman has a story of bonding (either voluntarily or forcibly) with a powerful white male to "bleach the line" as Tademy calls it, or making the Negro skin whiter to give the future generations of children better opportunities as they become passable as white. The story talks of the struggles of interracial love in prejudice times and the heartbreak it leads to. Just everything in the story is so moving and I felt pain for each trial the character went through and cheered for every joy that came their way. I found myself wishing I could just sit with the older generation women and just listen to more of their stories about their lives. I was infuriated with the ruinations that came to the family through the ignorant prejudice behaviors of the supposedly higher class uppitty Christians meddling in private affairs. But I understand that was the way of the times.

I can honestly say this book gave me one of the best perspectives of that era that I have ever read. It does well in displaying the advantages and disadvantages of each side of the color line and I applaud Tademy for bringing such a monumental work to the masses. The story was even more touching with the documents and pictures within the book as a constant reminder that while the book may have been fictionalized, these characters were at one time real living breathing people.

If you get a copy of this one, don't let go!!!

Cane River.......2007-05-09

I am currently reading this book and it is an awesome book. I have not put the book down since I brought it. I am looking forward to read her next book Red River. Mrs. Lalita Tademy is a great author. She keeps the reader attention from the beginning to the end. It is a must read book that could be used in American Literature.

Happy readings!

Read it in one day!.......2001-06-20

Cane River is absolutely enthralling. The story of Elisabeth, Suzette, Philomene and Emily is heartbreaking yet uplifting. It reaffirmed my faith in family and love. Get this book, you'll love it!

Very Good Book.......2001-06-16

I saw this book reviewed in People magazine and thought I would take a chance. I am glad I did. I enjoyed it and learned alot also.

Beth Gray's interracialvoice.com Commentary on "Cane River".......2001-06-12

Before reading this novel I happened to tune in to a National Public Radio re-broadcast of an interview with the author. She described her book as a fictionalized account of her family history based on difficult and lengthy research conducted with the aid of a professional genealogist. She decided to write it as an historical novel rather than as a work of non-fiction in order to explore character motivation. The author documents the book's historicity, however, with photographs, news clippings, copies of wills and bills of sale, and records of births, baptisms, and deaths.

In addition to her desire to fill in the gaps in her knowledge of her antecedents, Tademy stated that she had two other goals. First, to give specific voice to the mullato experience of slavery, a voice that she feels has not been heard. Second, to provide a portrayal of the society of the Cane River region in its unique place and time in U.S. history. Moreover, she stated that she wanted to achieve these goals without passing judgement on the real individuals or on her characterizations of them. She succeeds in drawing her characters as both simple and complex in personality and motivation. They are neither all good nor all evil, neither completely weak nor completely strong, but simply all too human.

Before the Civil War the people who lived along La Riviere Cannes were French speaking, Roman Catholic, and formed a three-tiered society...

The story unfolds through the experiences of four generations of women struggling to keep their extended family together while enduring heartbreak as well as the grinding hardships of daily survival. It is a story of social and family bonds during slavery, the Civil War, and the Jim Crow era. Two motifs emerge as central to plot development. First, because of the laws restricting marriage, this family evolved as matrifocal, matrilocal, and matrilineal. Not only were "whites" and slaves prevented from legal marriage, but slaves also could not legally marry one another. Second, because of the increasingly European proportion of their ancestry, the family developed a singular sense of their identity and heritage. The author and interviewer discussed this second motif under the rubric of "colorism" and as "the bleaching of the line." Tademy shows that this "bleaching" occurred in different ways. While in the first and second generation it was the outcome of nonconsensual unions, and in the third generation it was semi-consensual and calculated, by the fourth generation it was fully consensual. "Colorism" refers to the idea and practice of allocating favors and privileges according to the degree that lightness of skin approached "white" and grew out of the custom of French fathers providing for their "side" mullato children. Regardless of any material benefits occasionally conferred on these families, however, hypodescent functioned to ensure that their numbers increased the total slave population. As slaves, mullatos, quadroons, and octoroons were subjected to the conditions of that status irrespective of their degree of European descent, appearance, primary language, or culture.

After the war, the quality of life for former slaves was often just as harsh as before, and segregation laws took over where chattel slavery ended. The nature of "colorism" changed as well. Two young female characters faced a dearth of acceptable or available potential husbands and remained single and presumably celibate. At a certain point one says "if I knew then what I know now I would have married the blackest man I could find…" How is the reader to interpret this statement? Does it imply that despite freedom and her European appearance she would never be accepted as "white" on Cane River? Or does it imply that the "bleaching of the line" had come to naught and that, as deliberately as some of it had occurred, she might as well have sought to deliberately undo it? Eventually one of her brothers married a "black" woman and another married a "white" one. "Colorism" began to take on a different expression. Racial integrity laws were enacted to recover a mythic "white purity" that had already been lost. A mixed person with any degree of known African ancestry was barred from legal marriage with a "white" person. A "white" that married or lived with anyone designated "black" became socially "black." The prevention of marriages between people of mixed and unmixed European ancestry and the shortage of potential mixed mates resulted, in effect, in a socially forced reversal of amalgamation. The marriage of mixed people who looked European to "blacks" generated an enduring "black" obsession with shades of skin color and the development of what has elsewhere been termed a "mulatto elite."

Without institutionalized slavery to reinforce their dominance, southern "whites" grew increasingly vicious in their ultimately futile attempts to re-establish the long eroded "color line." Ironically, their relentless racism brought about what they feared most, the loss of their putative "purity." Under this pressure of exclusion, the numbers of mixed people who moved to areas where they were unknown and could blend into the white population heavily increased. As an example of this trend, one of the minor male characters moves to Texas to find better employment and falls permanently off the family tree. It would be interesting indeed to know what became of the collateral branches of the family and who their descendants are in Tademy's generation.

While the author referred to her story as part of "African American" history, she and the interviewer failed to note that it is also, perforce, part of "European American" history. If it were not, there would be no mullato "voice to be heard." The plot of Cane River exemplifies the kinds of relationship scenarios, social forces, complexities, and contradictions that were part of the slavery period in American history. In order to maintain the economic class/caste system it became necessary to fabricate a national mythos in which "races" must be conceptualized as mutually exclusive regardless of the abundance of evidence to the contrary. That these exploitative and archaic attitudes persist in 21st century America was evident in listening to Lalita Tademy and KPPC's Kitty Felde who, in discussing "race," spoke in 19th century terms. The author's grandmother was 1/16 Native American, 1/16 African, and 7/8 French yet they both described her as "African" American. Based on the personality of her novelized character it seems highly doubtful that Emily Fredieu would have identified with that description had it existed when she was alive.

The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color
Average customer rating:

Please Be Careful

EXCELLENT HISTORICAL READ

A people resurected

More French than African

Eradicating historical stereotypes

The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color
Gary B. Mills
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Isle of Canes (paperback)

Red River

The Creoles of Louisiana

Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color

Cane River (Oprah's Book Club)

ASIN: 0807102873

Customer Reviews:

Please Be Careful.......2006-06-27

I'm responding more to another comment than the book.

I notice that cane river creoles are becoming increasingly popular... and some believe they are an accurate representation of all creoles of color across the board, the standards set in that family are not the same set in all families. In proclaiming their own identity... they would discredit anothers. They describe themselves as such an exclusive group... I am not disputing that for them. In many other places too there were similar communitites - but it wasn't always the case... so please take care when you make comments about "creoles" in general... or at least specify that you are talking about a specific group of people... i.e. the creoles of cane river vs the creoles of lafayette, new orleans, lac charles, new iberia... there are differences.

EXCELLENT HISTORICAL READ.......2005-02-22

I picked my copy up at a yard sale primarily because it was a genealogy book. I started reading and am now really caught up in the history of these people. There is much we can learn from this society where people had common goals, helped each other, and as a result built a strong society. I find it criminal that their way of life, buildings, etc are destroyed. Reminds us of the stupidity of war, bigotry, and misuse of power.

A people resurected.......2001-10-11

Cane River has not only captured an era gone by, but has resurrected a legacy. The Metoyer family has multiplied beyond believe and the book has given them a tool to link together their roots and acknowledge their heritage. it also disspells any rumors of their true ethnic background

More French than African.......2001-09-02

What most do not realize if they are not from this area, is the creole/mullato are much more french than they are black & most do not consider themselves as black. I do not mean this to be demeaning to the African Americans of this country, but they are not familiar with many Creole/Mullatos that I know personally, as I grew up in that area of Grant/Natchitoches parish.

Eradicating historical stereotypes.......2001-05-12

Books such as THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE: CANE RIVER'S CREOLES OF COLOR and BLACK MASTERS: A FREE FAMILY OF COLOR IN THE OLD SOUTH go a long way toward correcting the over-simplified views we have of the gens de couleur (people of color) in American history. A slave (the daughter of two black persons brought to the United States as slaves) woman, Marie Thereze Coincoin develops a long-term relationship with the wealthy Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer. She eventually becomes free and gains property (including slaves). Once Metoyer and Marie Thereze go their separate ways (or at least end their intimate, if not their business assocation), Marie Thereze continues to add to her property. Her oldest son, the mulatto, (Nicolas) Augustin Metoyer buys property on Brevel Isle and is soon followed by his siblings, their children, and various other free people of color, forming a colony, which includes some of the wealthies people in the very wealthy surrounding community, including, of course, Augustin Metoyer. Many live in very fine mansions, such as Melrose. The colonists live as well off as the wealthiest whites even when economic stagnation sets in. They side with the Confederacy and, after the war, the community begins to crumble.

Book Description

Of the world's ancient poetry, that of classical India was the most vividly erotic-uninhibited, tender, sad, and joyous by turns. The poems sound as if they might have been written yesterday, although the period covered ranges from roughly 200 CE until about the eleventh century.

Customer Reviews:

Could have been written yesterday.......2002-09-17

A friend gave me a copy of this book, as I was looking for some poetry to set to music. I was inspired by the Barbara Stoller Miller translation of the Gita Govinda, pub by Columbia Univ., and my friend thought that this book pushed the envelope just a litte bit further.

The forward and introduction are very informative and make this centuries old poetry come alive in a relevant and contemporary way. The poems themselves are very, very old and Schelling's translations make them shimmer with life. If you've ever researched or read other translations of Sanskrit poetry, you will be thrilled with these translations.

As it turns out, I've received permission to use three of the poems in the book to set to music (in their original Sanskrit language).

This book offer a potent and eggshell fragile look at the range of emotions relating to love, romance and romantic longing.

Highly recommended.

A beautiful, sad, joyous book of the human condition.......1999-08-29

This is a wonderful little book of poetry. The poems of love, physical intimacy, desire, melancholy, longing and rejection in this collection date back over a millennia. A thousand years make these poem as poignant as ever. The poems in this collection are fleeting intimate glimpes into who we are as humans.

beautiful and evocative poetry.......1999-06-03

This is beautiful poetry from ancient India. It is rich and sensual, evocative and erotic, and not always in the overtly sexual way of the Kama Sutra. It engages life, society, and importantly, nature in all its lost beauty in India, the fragrant jasmine vines, the kadamba and ankota tree, the thunderstorm that releases a sudden coolness on a warm summer evening, the white cranes that cross the darkening sky. Then there is the secret rendezvous, the furtive gesture, the passionate love-making, the loss of youth, the immortal desire for fulfillment, the traveller and his betrayals, the gods engaged in their own love-making, Shiva and Parvati as the divine couple. These are timeless themes made more poignant by our desire for them today.

Poetry from Sanskrit and related Prakrits.......1998-10-09

There has been for several years a readily available book of Tamil erotic poetry The Interior Landscape which made the poetry of Southern India accessible. Now Andrew Schelling has provided a readily available text for Northern India. While the vast majority of these lyric poems are written in strictly metered quartrains, Schelling does a marvelous job of rendering the poems in free form - depending upon the images and sounds rather than the meter to translate the poetry into English (as opposed to the early stiff quatrain translations that encouraged no one to read Sanskrit/Prakrit poetry).

Book Description

Th&eacuter&egravese Lafirme, a beautiful and resourceful Creole woman, is widowed at age thirty-two and left alone to run her Louisiana plantation. When Th&eacuter&egravese falls in love with David Hosmer, a divorced businessman, her strong moral and religious convictions make it impossible for her to accept his marriage proposal. Her determined rejection sets the two on a tumultuous path that involves Hosmer's former wife, Fanny. At Fault is both romantic and filled with stark realism-a love story that expands to address the complex problem of balancing personal happiness and social duty-set in the post-Reconstruction South against a backdrop of economic devastation and simmering racial tensions. Written at the beginning of her career, At Fault parallels Chopin's own life and introduces characters and themes that appear in her later works, including The Awakening.

Customer Reviews:

Charming tale.......2007-10-05

A lovely, remarkable, resourceful widow running a plantation in Louisiana; her handsome, country-simple, honest, deep-feeling Creole nephew; a divorced businessman who builds a mill on her property; the mill-manager's self-possessed younger sister; his depressed, alcoholic wife, who comes to live with him; an engaging supporting cast of Negro servants and local townspeople; two problematic one-sided love affairs; the murder of an evil young man; the murder of one of the main characters; a disastrous reconciliation; a devastating storm ... These are some of the ingredients of this charming Southern novel which defies easy categorization. In the end, what shines through all the twists and turns of the plot is the inherent, admirable goodness of the two main characters.

Cane River Cuisine: Louisiana's Finest Recipes

Average customer rating:

An Old Standby
A bit of southern heaven!!
Wonderful old style cooking

Cane River Cuisine: Louisiana's Finest Recipes
Service League of Natchitoches Inc
Manufacturer: Wimmer Cookbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Plastic Comb

River Road Recipes: The Textbook of Louisiana Cuisine
Louisiana Entertains: Official Cookbook 1984 Louisiana World Exposition
Cotton Country Collection
Talk About Good
Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen

ASIN: 096076741X

Customer Reviews:

An Old Standby.......2007-06-12

I first bought this book while living in Natchitoches, LA around 30 years ago. My copy is yellowed with heavy use and spotted with a few decades of southern cooking. My children are grown now and live in different states. After years of phone calls requesting recipes from this book, that they remembered from their childhoods, I purchased each of the four grown children a copy of this cookbook for Christmas this last year. They were all thrilled with their copies. Not only does it bring them all the recipes they cherished from when they were growing up, but the pages hold a ton of childhood memories for them, as many of their early cooking experiences came from the pages of this book. I was thrilled to find I could still find them copies. If you want southern cooking at it's best, you can't go wrong with this book. The recipes all come from tried and true southern cooks and from true regional cuisine...not from some test kitchen somewhere.

A bit of southern heaven!!.......2004-05-13

I cannot say enough about how functional and interesting this cookbook is. I have a closet full of cookbooks, but this is my personal "no fail" favorite. My first was worn out from many years of use, and I gladly purchased my second copy. The recipes are outstanding, and the arrangement of the list of ingredients as well as the cooking instructions are easy to follow. This book is a fascinating glimpse into the delicious world of southern cooking. If you are interested in purchasing a cookbook you will use over and over, not just thumb through and place on a shelf, this is it. Forks up to those who compiled and illustrated it!

Wonderful old style cooking.......2000-02-12

This is not my first time owning this book. I am actually replacing the edition my Grandmother gave me in 1988. I loaned it to someone about 3 years ago and she still hesitates to tell me when I will get it back. I don't like the fact that I haven't gotten it back but I understand why I haven't

"Cane River Cuisine" is a wonderful collection of time tested recipes by local Louisana cooks. The recipes are interesting, relatively easy to prepare and for the most part, appealing to a variety of tastes. In my opinion, it is a good cross section of Louisana cooking styles, ingredients and tastes. I say this because some of my family members come from Baton Rouge and New Orleans so I have some experience with Louisana cooking styles.

My favorite recipe in this book is the meat pies featured on the first page. The pies remind me of the ones my mother made when I was a kid. They are meaty, spicy and the crust is flaky and tender. I have served them as a main course and made smaller versions to serve as appetizers for parties. They have turned out wonderfully every time.

I have enjoyed cooking from this book. However, some people who shy away from "comfort foods" might be put off by the types of oils, cooking methods (frying) and high calorie ingredients in some of the recipes. Restraint is all though. Eating these foods (or any food) in moderation is the key maintaining one's health while enjoying some really good eats.

The book has everything you will need to cook a down home Southern meal from clever appetizers to rich, delicious deserts.

Book Description

iLouisiana Creolesi examines the recent efforts of the Louisiana Creole Heritage Center to document and preserve the distinct ethnic heritage of this unique American population. Dr. Andrew JolivZtte uses sociological inquiry to analyze the factors that influence ethnic and racial identity formation and community construction among Creoles of Color living in and out of the state of Louisiana.

Customer Reviews:

Louisiana Creoles.......2007-10-08

Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity

As I read this book, I was constantly taking notes. It gave me a more indepth look into my culture as it incorporated the American Indian history and identity of our many, different ethnic backgrounds. I definitely recommend this book to all readers of multiracial background interests.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books