216 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / 5 halftones
History / United States - Southern History | Social Studies / Cultural Anthropology
Rien Fertel is a writer and teacher who lives in New Orleans. He is the author of three previous books: Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera, The One True Barbecue: Fire, Smoke, and the Pitmasters Who Cook the Whole Hog, and Imagining the Creole City: The Rise of Literary Culture in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans.
“A fascinating literary history of Francophone and Anglophone creole New Orleans writers from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. . . . [An] exceptionally thoughtful and intelligent book.”—American Historical Review
“Fertel uses rare publications and archival collections to present a taut, deeply researched, and gracefully written study. His book is foundational for understanding New Orleans’s history and the birth of Louisiana literature.”—Journal of American History
“In understanding the multivalent legacies of the architects of Creole culture, Fertel’s interdisciplinary approach to historical narratives, poetry, political essays, and fiction is welcome and effective. . . . From this study, an important genealogy of New Orleans’s contentious print culture emerges.”—Journal of Southern History
“With an informative notes section that highlights important bodies of work, and a comprehensive bibliography that testifies to the scale of his research, Fertel consolidates the information most relevant to his thesis within each chapter. . . . An important intervention in studies of Creole literary history, giving, for the first time, serious critical treatment of the white Creole print culture that contributed both to Creole identity formation and to ideologies of race and identity in the larger United States.”—Journal of American Studies
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