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Louisiana Sojourns Travelers' Tales and LiteraryJourneys Edited by Frank De Caro Louisiana State University Press, 1998 581 pp. Cloth, $39.95 Reviewed by Gaines M. Foster, professor of history at Louisiana State University and author of Ghosts ofthe Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence ofthe New South, i#6;—i9ij from Oxford University Press, 1987. Louisiana must surely be the most distinctive and diverse ofthe southern states. In geography, demography, and culture north Louisiana resembles much of the rest of the South. But below an imaginary line drawn somewhere south of Alexandria, much changes. Bayous (which Louisianians will not call "rivers"), swamps, and a semi-tropical climate create an unusual landscape. There, over the course of three centuries, French, Spanish, Haitian, Irish, German, Italian, and a few other peoples have created a diversity unlike anywhere else in the South. Catholics dominated the region's development, and a persisting carnival culture promotes a moral climate residents of the Bible Belt can only condemn—and enjoy on vacation. Even race relations differ from those in other areas of Dixie. Antebellum New Orleans had a distinguished free black community, and centuries ofracial and ethnic intermixture have created a fascinating blend ofcolors and cultures that still shapes identities and attitudes. And if all that were not enough, the western part of south Louisiana boasts not one but two Cajun cultures , as well as descendants of midwesterners who setded there in the late nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, so exotic a state has long attracted visitors, many ofwhom have written of their experiences. Louisiana Sojourns brings together seventy-six brief excerpts from accounts by outsiders and a few by Louisianians writing of visits to other parts of the state. The earliest dates from the late 1 500s, the latest from the early 1990s. Some of the travelers are well known, others are more obscure , but almost all offer interesting observations. Frank De Caro, a folklorist by trade and on his own (now quite extended) sojourn in Louisiana, with the help of Rosan AugustaJordan, has chosen the selections well. To bring coherence to the tour of Louisiana that the selections provide, the editors group them into chapters by subject. Some are defined by geography: the Mississippi River, New Or80 southern cultures, Fall 1999 : Reviews leans, "Red Clay Hills and Piney-Woods," and "Bayou, Marsh, Coast." Other chapters are organized around subcultures (the African Americans and the Cajuns ) or historical experiences (the plantation and the Civil War). The final three chapters bring together selections on the environment, festivals, and religious activities . The editors provide a short, helpful introduction to each chapter, very briefintroductions to each selection, and few but sufficient footnotes. This editorial matter includes no theoretical discussion of "traveler" writing (a term insisted on to distinguish these authors from professional travel writers), but provides information to help the reader understand the context of the selection and appreciate the nature ofthe state. The editors intend Louisiana Sojourns to appeal to two primary audiences, those "interested in the literary, cultural, and historical backgrounds of the Bayou State" and travelers on their own "current explorations " of Louisiana. Both will find the book of great interest, but it succeeds a litde better as a guide for travel than to history. As to the latter, Louisiana Sojourns suffers from shortcomings, although they reflect the attitudes of travelers and are not the fault of the editors. As the editors acknowledge, the collection is biased toward the distinctive culture and environment of south Louisiana. Travelers simply had less interest in writing about the northern part of the state, which they felt resembled the rest of the South. (Similarly they wrote much about Louisiana's Catholics, but litde about its Protestants .) The same search forwhat one traveler called the "more novel and curious" means the selections too often miss, as another selection warned, die "embarrassingly obvious and essential." As a result, the modernization of the state gets short shrift. One traveler shops in a mall, but none mentions seeing a Blockbuster or a McDonald's. Or, to take another example, the book includes an extended description of the moss industry in the 1950s but no sustained discussion of the oil industry. Politics, like...

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