Take a Trip to the Louisiana Book Festival, 2018

Signing copies of Cane River Bohemia.

The fifteenth annual Louisiana Book Festival was held last weekend and your humble correspondent was honored to be a part of it as one of the presenters for my book Cane River Bohemia.

You know you have reached the surreal when you are signing books fifteen feet away from Donna Brazile who was there signing her new book, Hacks, or riding the elevator at your hotel with the legendary Ernest Gaines. I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Gaines last year at the Books Along the Teche literary festival: he is a gracious gentleman and gifted writer.

My husband and I drove to Baton Rouge Friday afternoon in time to make the author’s party at the State Library of Louisiana that evening. I’ll admit that I did think about Stacy McCain when we drove through Livonia. (You might ask him about that speeding ticket a few years ago!)

The author’s party was fabulous; there was a jazz band and enough superb Louisiana food to feast upon for days: gumbo, boudin balls, crab cakes, shrimp alfredo, bread pudding, etouffee, and of course Abita beer; the food just went on forever.

I met the most fascinating people and added to my “want to read” list in a significant way. I even added a children’s book to my list: Poncho’s Rescue: A Baby Bull and a Big Flood, by Julie Thomas, who was working with the LSU Vet school during the floods of 2016 and was involved with the team who helped save the very sick little animal after his rescue. It’s quite a story!

I ran into the fabulous Mary Ann Wilson who I met last year, also at the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival; she was giving a book talk entitled "Voices from Louisiana: Profiles of Contemporary Writers."  In New Iberia last year she spoke so eloquently on James Lee Burke's Tin Roof Blowdown I had to come home and re-read it.

With Dr. Mary Ann Wilson

I also chased down Karen McManus, author of the popular YA novel, One of Us is Lying, to tell her how much both I and my students love her book. She was very gracious and didn’t seem to mind my gushing fan-girl approach, thankfully.

And of course, I got to visit with my favorite editor, Margaret Lovecraft of LSU Press who made my book so much better than what I envisioned.

With Margaret Lovecraft, LSU Press.

Day two began with a little sightseeing around Baton Rouge; we spent a lot of time on the levee watching the tow boats and barges on the Mississippi River; we toured the old Louisiana State Capitol which is absolutely stunning.

Old Louisiana State Capitol

 The stained glass, kaleidoscope dome is breathtaking. Then we headed over to the Capitol grounds for the festival.

Stained glass dome, Old State Capitol

The Louisiana Book Festival draws about 20,000 people and is one of the top book festivals in the South. This year there were 250 authors either giving talks about their books or participating in panel discussions. There are children’s events and various live music performances as well as food trucks all day long. The book presentations take place in the State Capitol Building in the various House and Senate Committee meeting rooms in thirty-minute intervals and then the authors are shuttled over to the signing tent to sign copies of their books.

 My presentation was one of the last ones of the day and so we had plenty of time to browse the book tents while waiting. We picked up My Brother’s Keeper by Chris Blackwood, which is a true-crime thriller about the 1984 death of Gary Kergan from Crowley, Louisiana. The case went cold and was finally resolved thirty years later and it’s a wild one. Chris sat next to me as we signed books together and she signed our book! We also bought The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros, the epitome Southern Gothic novel filled with voodoo, quirky characters, and mysterious plot. It’s getting good reviews so I can’t wait to just get lost in this one.

 Louisiana is home to so many terrific and talented authors, I think in part due to the cultural diversity we have in our state. From the southern tip of the state to the far northeastern corner, we are a mélange of swamps, rice fields, sugar cane and cotton fields, and bustling cities. We are refineries and skyscrapers, blue collar workers and suits. We are the Shreveport Symphony, New Orleans jazz, and Cajun zydeco. We eat boudin, crawfish, alligator, meat pies, and the infamous gumbo. We are fine dining with a river view in Baton Rouge, woodfired pizzas at the craft beer tap room in Arnaudville, and huge homemade burgers in Coushatta, and delicious pies in LeCompte. We are magnolia trees, Spanish moss, azaleas, and cape jasmine. We are Spanish, French, African, Jamaican, Creole, Irish, English, Hispanic, but uniquely American. It is no wonder that Louisiana writers and authors create such a wonderful and diverse collection of material every single year which is celebrated at the Louisiana Book Festival.

Be sure to put it on your calendar for next year: you won’t be sorry!

Currently Reading and Looking for Suggestions

Doesn't everyone have a stack or two of books around their house just waiting to be read?

I have several of these: there's a stack by "my spot" in the living room and a stack by my bed.  There's also another stack on the living room shelf, all just waiting for me to have time to crack the covers.  I'm old school and still prefer paper over digital books, but I do read some on my Kindle app just because it is convenient when I'm on the go.  But really, I thrive on the feel of the paper and the smell of the ink.

I've been on Spring Break this week and my reading has had a decided geographic focus. A couple of weeks ago I read A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines which was quite moving and perhaps life changing.  To follow up on that I then read A Gathering of Old Men, also by Ernest Gaines, and for the life of me I can't figure out why I've never read his work before.  I highly recommend both of these books.  To round out my Gaines-a-thon, I have The Tragedy of Brady Sims sitting at the top of my stack to be read next.

Gaines has a way and creating character and atmosphere that transports you to the time and place while creating empathy and new understanding in a way you never knew was lacking.  His works should be included in any study of Southern writers.

Also in my reading this week I am, like a million other people, reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.  I'm not finished with it yet, but I am indeed having trouble putting it down.  The writing and the stylistic choices are simply beautiful and I can easily see why this book is captivating readers everywhere right now.  Like Ernest Gaines, Jones has a gift of creating character.  I want so badly to place blame in this novel but because of her deft use of perspective, I just can't do it.

Jumping into non-fiction, I'm also currently reading Teche: A History of Louisiana's Most Famous Bayou by Shane Bernard.  This book came out in November 2016, but should be required reading for any student of Louisiana history.  Bernard goes deep into the history of the region in the first part of the book while the second half of the book is travelogue about his own journey up the Teche in a canoe.  There are lots of maps and photographs throughout the book which are an asset and help the reader see exactly what is being described.  It's a fascinating book.

I'm really interested in finding some good, objective books about the Louisiana wetlands and the vanishing coastline.  I haven't done a lot of research into that and I'm curious but I want to read something by someone without an agenda.  Everything I'm turning up is either by big oil and they're trying to deflect blame or by environmentalists who want to blame global warming or big oil....  I just want something true and objective.  If you have some recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

My break is coming to an end tomorrow and it will be back to work and I'll slowly work my way through the rest of the two books I'm currently reading. The luxurious afternoons of sitting in the swing under the magnolia tree and reading the afternoon away are coming to an end for now.

Tell me what you're reading: I need to build my stacks back up!

Life Lessons from Ernest Gaines and A Lesson Before Dying

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to New Iberia to attend the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival, I have spent the past week reading A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines.

Mr. Gaines will be the featured guest at the festival and I want to read his works before I potentially meet him. The book was published in 1993 and for some reason I've never read it.  As much as I love Southern Literature and Southern writers, I can't fathom how this book slipped by me.  Now that I've read this book I am afraid I will be totally speechless in this man's presence.

I sobbed through the last twenty pages.  It took me three days to finish them.

In my twenty-two year career as an educator, I've known many, many kids like Jefferson.  I've know lots of Grants, too.

The setting of the novel is the Jim Crow south. Jefferson is twenty-one years old and sentenced to death for his presence at the murder of a local store keeper. The public defender calls Jefferson a mere "hog" during the trial and it becomes Grant's role to encourage Jefferson to die like a man, not like a hog.  Grant is reluctant to take this assignment on but his aunt won't take no for an answer.

Grant is a teacher; he teaches the plantation children who live in the quarter. 

As I read, I kept thinking about education. Grant went to college, got a degree, and returned to the quarter to live with his aunt and teach the children, yet he dreams of running away and starting a new life. Jefferson, on the other hand, is semi-literate and spent his life working in the fields.  Would education have saved him? Did it save Grant?

As I approached those last twenty pages all I could think of was "I teach this kid.  I have Jefferson in my classroom every year.  At least one of him, sometimes more," and by that I mean simply kids that sometimes end up in places they never intended and sometimes through no fault of their own. Life happens. What's going to happen to them?  Are we ensuring that all of our kids, every one of them, are equipped with the life skills they need to survive?  Are we doing our best by them?

In my long career in public education I can honestly say that it's not the same profession now that it used to be.  That's good in some ways and in other ways not so much.  While raising expectations for our students is great, I have real concerns about our "test and assess" culture that has come to define education and I have had kids tell me more and more often that all they feel like they are learning is how to test.  That breaks my heart.

So I try harder to engage and to make our scripted curriculum relevant and meaningful to them. Through the years, with more and more test prep added into the curriculum, it becomes harder and harder.

Kids like Jefferson sit in every classroom across the country.  Are we helping them by endlessly asking them to explain why they picked C over A and to justify that answer?  It frustrates me.  Is this a life skill they need or are we just lining the pockets of test makers?

As educators, we've been told that the shift from novels and books in ELA classes is permanent and that we will likely never return to teaching entire novels in class any longer.  (Kids can read them on their own, we are told.)  That makes me sad because that means that we lose Grant Wiggins, Atticus Finch, Huckleberry Finn, and thousands of other characters who inspire and through whom we vicariously can live and learn.  Are we doing these kids any favors by this?  I'm no longer sure.

As I read the last twenty pages of A Lesson Before Dying, through my tears I picked up my phone and sent a message to an educator friend who is equally passionate about kids and literature.  "I will never understand people who don't read," I said.  "The places they'll never go, people they'll never meet, and things they'll never feel is stunning."  Deep in my heart I believe this.

Through reading we learn empathy and compassion. That printed words on a page can touch a person so deeply they are moved to tears is amazing to me.  Equally important, words on a page can make us angry enough to fight for change, can take us to places we will perhaps never visit, can introduce us to role models, anti-heroes, innocence of spirit, purity of heart, and can teach us new ways of looking at the world.

I lived almost fifty-nine years having never met Grant Wiggins or Jefferson, but now my life is richer and forever changed because I did.

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