La Renaissance louisianaise. It was the title of a weekly newspaper which proclaimed itself “the organ of the Franco-American populations of the South” ; between 1861 and 1871, this publication shared works of all kinds, written in French by Louisianans. Unfortunately, like all 19th century magazines, its distribution stopped after barely a decade of activity.
Following the many changes that occurred after the Civil War and the political and social upheavals that typified the Reconstruction period, the French language gradually withdrew from the public sphere and English became the de facto lingua franca of the New South. The last French-language newspaper, L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, ceased publication in 1923, almost a century after its first publication. Since then, La Renaissance louisianaise and all the different French newspapers published since the 1700s in Louisiana seemed to belong to a multilingual past, forever gone.
Against all odds, a hundred years after L’Abeille, and more than a century after the publication of the last Louisiana novel in French, the trilogy Les Quarteronnes de la Nouvelle-Orléans by Sidonie de La Houssaye, the first volume of which was published in 2006 by Éditions Tintamarre (university press of Centenary College in Shreveport), marked the return to French literary production in Louisiana.
Tintamarre has already published several books this year. Last January, Les Rafales du Carême was released, a novel by Zachary Richard, renowned musician and first poet laureate of French-speaking Louisiana. The plot takes place in his native village of Scott, where a murder has just been committed; with this criminal investigation as background, Richard highlights the issues of what is perhaps the most turbulent period in Louisiana’s history. In March, Tintamarre published a second novel, halfway between the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the fantastic stories of celebrated author H. P. Lovecraft : Auguste Poitevin: a French adventurer in New Orleans, by Gérard Dôle, which recounts the adventures of a detective in the service of General Benjamin Butler during the occupation of the crescent city. At the end of June, the publisher presents a third title, La Tentation d’Odala, by Alix Lecomte; Le Drac du Meschacébé, a novel for adolescents written by Rich Paul Cooper, will be published soon.
As if to echo such a long absence, such a great silence, Louisiana authors, like Zachary Richard, demonstrate an unprecedented enthusiasm for literary production, as a channel for transmitting culture and French language of Louisiana, page after page. True to their commitment to “defend and illustrate the Louisiana Francophonie”, Éditions Tintamarre will launch a contest this year again, like the one organized two years ago, which led to the publication of Contes merveilleux in 2023. At the end of the competition, Tintamarre will publish a new collection of modern tales in French, selected from all the contributions, all submitted by Louisiana authors.
We don’t know what the future holds, but what we know for sure, is that, for this renewal of literary interest to constitute a true renaissance, we must all continue to write in French, read in French and speak in French every day. Languages and cultures have no existence of their own; they only exist and survive if they are practiced, protected and more importantly, transmitted. We need to be humble, proud, grateful and present. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, calls her people to grab arms, literally: “To arms, citizens!”. For those of us in Louisiana who wish to preserve our linguistic heritage, our call could go something like this: “To pens, citizens!”
