Federal Writers Project

If you can understand and read heavy Negro dialect, then you will enjoy this book. It took me a few chapters to get into the groove and read fluidly. I personally believe this to be one of the most important history books of all time. You hear directly from the survivors of slavery, themselves, of where they came from, their experiences as a slave, and what they did following freedom, without the fluff or the lies or the changing of history. This volume consists of interviews of all persons who were brought to Texas as slaves from the east coast in and around 1858, at the cusp of the Civil War. Interviews were performed just in time, as all the ex-slaves were now very old, from about 86 years to over 100 years old.
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2019 52-Bookmark Reading Challenge -
#18/52 - Book about history… (altro)

Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales by Lyle Saxon, Robert Tallant (1945), 1st edition, hardcover (no jacket), 581 pages.

I was able to find this rare first edition (1945) for my Louisiana book collection for $50 on eBay from the Catholic Charities of NE Kansas in Overland, KS. All proceeds went to charity.

A very unique read! The extended title is a little deceiving. This was mostly centered around Creole folklore and many religious superstitions in, specifically, New Orleans in early 1940’s. But, there were many odd stories presented by way of real life interviews with a few elders of the city of New Orleans describing their memories of certain events that actually took place and some photos included to go along with the stories. Not all of the stories in this book are folklore; some are actually true. You can also Google some of the other people he writes about and actually find old photos of them online. These stories you may never hear or read about anywhere else. It seems they were gathered just in time, as some of the interviewees were in their 80’s and 90’s in the early 1940’s when these interviews were taking place. They would have been born between about 1850 and 1860 and would have seen a lot of changes over their lifetime. If you are Creole, or have Creole blood, you will find this book extremely interesting. Who knows, you might even find your ancestor’s name mentioned. I looked forward to each chapter because it was a completely different story on something that happened in New Orleans. Some stories were very intriguing, while others, I yawned my way through.… (altro)