Cajun Country

The bayou at Evangeline Oak Park

The last portion of our trip was through Cajun country of Lafayette, LA. Although I’d heard of Cajuns before this trip, I’d never learned about what the word meant. Andrew explained that it was a group of people descended from French Canadian settlers who had been forced out of the north, but as is often the case, the literal definition of their history is nowhere near enough to describe this group. On our first day in Lafayette, we went to see the Evangeline Oak, a tree named for an old romantic legend. It was a massive oak tree in a tiny park, surrounded by thick, muddy bayou waters. In all of the different little towns we visited, the surrounding swamp was always present. It was a reminder, we were out in the middle of nowhere. But it never felt threatening. Instead, it added to the quietness of all of the towns. It made it clear that we were in a place that wasn’t about the stresses of urban environments. 

A live oak covered in Spanish moss at the Jungle Gardens

We got to experience this environment even closer when we visited Avery Island. We stopped briefly in the Tabasco factory shop, a hilarious tribute to and collection of all things Tabasco including jewelry, stuffed animals, stickers, and tiny bottles of hot sauce that were about the size of my thumb. However, the highlight of this place was the Jungle Gardens we then drove into and explored. The Jungle Gardens were a huge park made of swamp, filled with gorgeous live oaks whose branches dripped with Spanish moss. We saw an alligator who made its home in a pond, and a lookout point at “Bird City”, the ruins of some old wooden swamp building that was now the resting place of hundreds and hundreds of majestic white egrets. 

“Bird City”

What was by far the most impactful part of our time in Cajun country, though, was when we went to a Cajun music jam in the tiny town of Arnaudville. We stopped on our way at the supermarket to pick up some food, the gathering being a potluck as well as a music-making session. Then, after driving farther and farther from the more centralized little towns of the area, we pulled into this quaint little village. One of the few non-house buildings was labeled with a sign that said “Tom’s Fiddle and Bow” which was where we were going. We entered the cozy shop’s front room, and were immediately greeted by the melody of violins and accordions. A few people, all in their 60s-80s, sat in the front room, playing music. Past this, a back room housed a small kitchen and a slightly larger group of bluegrass musicians, also all in their 60s-80s, on guitars and mandolins and singing together as they played. And in those first minutes of letting the music wash over me, I had a realization–I’d never before been to a gathering held purely for the purpose of wanting to make music together. There was no audience, no formality, no productivity, no goal. Everyone was there because something inside them made them want to make music and be with people. The shop, unsurprisingly, belonged to a man named Tom, who based his business here of repairing fiddles. Fiddles hung on all of the walls, seeming to declare the space as a home of music. 

Andrew playing violin at the Cajun music jam

The way everyone was immediately so friendly and open toward us felt surprising. Here we were, a group of obvious foreigners to this land, none of us knowing anyone there other than Andrew. It would have been so easy to ignore us or dislike us, but that never seemed to even be a possibility there. The people smiled and talked to us, telling us stories of their lives and what had brought each of them here. I was struck with emotion as the lively music washed over me. Everyone there had whole lifetimes of experiences, many dating back seven or eight decades, having come here to this tiny town from both all over the country and from the immediate area, and here they all were, united as one group because they wanted to make music. As time went on, the bluegrass group got smaller but the Cajun group got bigger. Andrew got a fiddle from Tom and joined in the music making, following along and improvising. There was no written guide for any of it; it was all played from memory and from the heart and from people feeling the music and joining in. 

A freeform sketch of the Cajun music group all united in music

At a certain point, Andrew encouraged me to join in, after I admitted I played a bit of guitar. I was nervous to join. I didn;t know what I was doing, and I was afraid of ruining the beautiful songs that all of these people were working so hard to play. But I got a guitar from Tom and walked up to the circle. An older lady there looked at me and smiled wide and immediately shifted her chair over to make space for me. I looked to the fingers of the other guitar players to follow along. Although I was new, I had been welcomed in like I was a part of the community. Everyone’s kindness and openness absolutely astounded me. At one point, a man who was clearly well respected, who although he was younger was being looked to by everyone to lead the music, made eye contact with me as I was trying to figure out what to play. He had been incredibly skillfully playing intricate fingering patterns, but he stopped, and began to play the open chords of the music so I could follow along and join in. The warmth of the gesture floored me. He stopped being the leader of the music, he stopped his demonstration of skill and grace, just to help introduce me, a stranger, to the music making. We never said a word to each other; he was playing guitar and singing the entire time we were there. As we all sang and danced together, I felt a happiness and a fullness I hadn’t felt in a long time. 

The Work of Ernest J. Gaines

“How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?” -Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines is a heart-wrenching novel that deals with issues of race, poverty and incarceration. Although it is set in the 1940s, this country faces so many of the same problems that it didn’t read as at all dated. During our time in Baton Rouge, we got to explore some of the places from Dr. Gaines’ life.  

A tiny and oppressive old jail cell

One of the first things we did upon getting to Baton Rouge was head to Pointe Coupee Parish. This is the area of Louisiana that Dr. Gaines grew up in and, after he moved to California for a few years, ended up moving back to. Upon arriving, we were greeted outside the courthouse by Sherriff Thibideaux. He was really friendly, and brought us inside to meet the chief of police and the mayor of the town. Upon entering their meeting room the first thing I noticed was a massive “blue lives matter” flag plaque on the wall and I was immidiately nervous. I was nervous about what that meant about the people who had so warmly welcomed us in. I knew statistically that, because we were in the South and out of the artsy city, the people would be more conservative. But the idea of being led around by someone who had the combination of a) having a lot of power while we were in completely new territory and b) likely harboring racist and bigoted beliefs put me on edge from the beginning. As he talked and joked with the group (and also because I figured we had a safety in numbers and Andrew knew what to say if any suspicion fell on us), I became slowly more at ease, although I wouldn’t say I ever completely lost the wariness. 

The grave of the great Dr. Ernest J. Gaines

After talking with the sheriff, we were then shown into the old area of the courthouse, where jails that were in use from the 1800s to 1980s now lay unused, filled with boxes and boxes of unorganized archives collecting dust. This was the same courthouse that Jefferson would have lived in awaiting his execution in A Lesson Before Dying. They were in terrible condition. The paint was peeling, bunks were missing, trash and papers were scattered around. But the most haunting part wasn’t the state of the cells as they were now, it was the knowledge that they actually kept people here, in these tiny, hot, cramped cells. It was the knowledge that conditions like that are still happening all across the country. That human beings, often people targeted for their race, both were and are being treated so inhumanly. A Lesson Before Dying does a fantastic job of showing the audience Jefferson’s humanity and dignity, even though he is ultimately executed. 

The day after, we saw Ernest Gaines’ house. Cheylon Woods, an archivist at the Ernest J. Gaines center, showed us around the property and told us about its history. He built his house on the plantation his family was enslaved at. It remains a sugar plantation, with a lot of the old architecture still remaining. Dr. Gaines took measures to preserve the church the enslaved people who lived there would attend, one very much like the one in the novel where Wiggins taught. He also preserved the old cemetery where generations of enslaved people were buried in unmarked graves, including his aunt, who was a big inspiration for him. The cemetery is now home to his grave as well, which we visited. 

Original handwritten pages of the first draft of A Lesson Before Dying

The following day, we met with Cheylon Woods again, but this time at her home base at the Ernest J. Gaines center at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. The walls were covered with various awards and plaques that Dr. Gaines had been awarded. After she told us about his life and how he had gotten various things, she took us into another room and took out two archival boxes. From them she took out the original manuscripts of A Lesson Before Dying. Seeing them was absolutely incredible. Some of the folders had pages of handwritten chapters, others had early typed versions that were different from the finished book. You could see edits and notes of Dr. Gaines in the margins. Here we were, holding pages he had written. I felt so connected to him. I pictured him writing the novel out by hand, sometimes struggling to think of the next words, other times furiously scribbling to try to keep up with his mind. The way he wrote notes in the margins to his editors really brought my mental image of him down to earth. He went from “the Author of the book” in my mind to a man. A man who was a pioneering Black author. A man who took it upon himself to tell the stories others wouldn’t. A man who saved the memories of so many people. 

Graffiti in one of the old jail cells at the courthouse

The work Ernest J. Gaines did to keep the landmarks and tell the stories of people who white people brutalized and then tried to forget is such a noble task, and one that is very similar to Wiggins’ task to allow Jefferson to experience proper humanity, even though he is being murdered by bigots who have too much power. I think it is so, so important to tell the stories of the people that society and mainstream historical narratives have tried to forget. It is vital to everyone that we remember the way people have been marginalized and oppressed and that we actively work to fight it. Dr. Gaines is incredibly inspirational in the way he worked to do this. 

A City for Writing

“New Orleans may be too seductive for a writer.” -Walker Percy, author of The Moviegoer and other novels

New Orleans has a long history of being a city for writers and artists. One of the reasons the Bookpacking experience is perfectly well-suited for this city is the way so much culture and so many people are brought into a totally unique and bohemian place, making it a wonderful home for aspiring writers and a fantastic subject for stories. Famous writers, like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Mark Twain lived in New Orleans, and all of the books on our book list took place in or right outside of the city. 

The group standing with the Ignatius J. Reilly statue on Canal Street

Part of what made Bookpacking so cool was the ability to visit the places we had just read about, making the books feel so much more real. On our first night out, we all walked down Canal Street and not only got to see the places where Ignatius of A Confederacy of Dunces walked but also found a statue of him. After having just spent the length of the novel with this character, seeing him in person with his hunter hat and sour expression, draped in Mardi Gras beads, felt really special. New Orleans allowed the fiction to come to life. 

One evening, as we were in the process of reading Coming Through Slaughter, a book about the life of founding member of jazz Buddy Bolden, we went to Preservation Hall to listen to a live jazz performance. Preservation Hall was a small building and the age of the wood that made it up was apparent. Stepping into the hall felt like stepping back in time. We stood in the very back of the room. As the lights dimmed and the musicians started, a mood and energy filled the room unlike any other. The music pulsed through the space and the instruments seemed just as alive as their players. Each person had a turn for a solo, and as the different instruments went back and forth it was like the instruments were engaged in conversation with each other that I got to witness. It was easy to picture living decades ago, standing in that same room, listening to what was at the time this new kind of music, a music that seemed to be able to create life in the air. Through the music, I was suddenly connected to Bolden through more than just words and feelings, but through beat, energy, and melody. His spirit was in the music, and through music, everything is alive. 

Mardi Gras costume on exhibit at the Presbytère museum

Part of what makes New Orleans such a fitting setting for Interview with the Vampire is that the city seems to push the limits of what is possible to exist in reality. The city has a long history of suspected vampires and of ghost sightings, going right back to colonial days. Its history blurs the line in the city between fantasy and real life, something that makes it the perfect setting for a vampire story. It also makes it a wonderful place to write in general, because it’s somewhere where stories are able to seep into reality, and where people are able to step into stories. 

This is also seen in the novel The Moviegoer, where Binx’s experience of the city is constantly being compared in his mind to different movies he’s seen. Because of New Orleans’ one-of-a-kind literary quality, it really lends itself to someone who wants to see the world through the lens of a story.

Book of A Streetcar Named Desire that was signed by the original cast

Another facet of The Moviegoer is that throughout the book, Binx’s family is preparing a krewe for Mardi Gras, which is a group that gets together to make a float for the parade. Although Mardi Gras had passed this year, we got to go see an exhibit on the celebration and what went into making it at the Presbytère museum. No matter how detailed a description is of the Mardi Gras costumes, nothing could ever capture their majesty in real life. The costumes are huge, for one thing. I can’t imagine walking around in all of that, let alone in the Louisiana heat. Every inch of them is beaded, feathered, or colored. The opulence of the whole thing was absolutely astounding. I saw why it was such a big deal to the family to have to figure everything out. 

In addition to our Bookpacking books, we also got the opportunity to explore the city’s connection to other great authors. The Historic New Orleans Collection museum had an exhibit focusing on A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’ play exploring toxic masculinity and relationships and mental health in New Orleans in the 1940s. The exhibit featured the desk Williams wrote at and some original manuscripts and film props, which were really cool to see. I had read A Streetcar Named Desire for school previously, and it made me really grateful I had. Every writing of New Orleans seems to have a different perspective of the city, and seems to see it as a slightly different thing. Because of this, the more I read the more ways I’m able to look at the city. 

My imagining of absinthe, aka. “The Green Fairy”, a popular drink both in New Orleans and among writers of a certain time period

Another stop we made in the French Quarter was the Faulkner House bookstore, named because it had once been the house of William Faulkner. It was a small but neat and beautiful bookstore. We passed a bar that had been frequented by authors like Faulkner, Williams, Rice, and Hemingway, where they would go to drink absinthe and write and talk. The unconventionality and artistry of the city has always given writers the freedom to observe other people and explore themselves in deeper and new ways. Especially for queer writers, New Orleans was somewhere they could safely experiment with themselves and were given the ability to be themselves in full rather than having to hide. 

Beauty in the Face of Pain

“As if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.”

Canal Street at dusk

New Orleans is a city unlike any other. That became clear from the moment we arrived. On Tuesday evening we walked down Canal Street to Bourbon Street seeking out dinner, and I was struck by how lively the city was. We ran into a band playing on the street, its passionate music filling the night. Although it was dark out, the neon signs of every color lit up the street like an arcade. It was overwhelming how much there was to see. There was the beauty of the lights and music and joyous crowds, but, especially on Bourbon Street, there was an atmosphere of sleaziness that was inescapable. The next few days, we explored the French Quarter further. Getting away from Bourbon Street, the age and culture of the city became more apparent. Boutiques and galleries and tourist shops sat below old French apartments, with wrought-iron railings overflowing with hanging plants and Mardi Gras beads. We went to the Pharmacy Museum and the Voodoo Museum, two very little places crammed full of old artifacts and interesting history. It was the little spots of authenticity scattered around in the touristy area that made the city feel so vibrant. The contrast between the modern and the historic gives the city an out-of-time feel to it. 

French style old houses and overgrown ivy

I identified with the city as soon as we arrived. There’s something about the mixture of artistic beauty and pain that resonates a lot with me. It is filled with ghosts. In Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice explores the gothic side of the city through the goings about of Louis, a man who is able to get a new outlook on life when he is turned into a vampire. This novel does a brilliant job of showing the darkness of New Orleans, and how that’s not always a bad thing. I have always found a certain comfort in the gothic and macabre, and Rice’s exploration of the city through this light really resonated with me. As a vampire, Louis is able to fully realize how beauty and pain are inseparable in his life. Before he was turned, he was horribly depressed following the death of his brother and facing the resentment of the rest of his family. As a vampire, he becomes re-immersed in life, simultaneously being given the freedom to go out into the city with new eyes and a new perspective on time as someone who lived through centuries, and also having to wrestle with the moral consequences of needing to kill to survive. As a nocturnal city, New Orleans allows for Louis to go out and re-engage with the world. And even in all of the pain of having to live a secret and subtle life and having a very toxic relationship with Lestat and having to figure out how to cope with his new reality, he is able to find moments of beauty, with experiencing the city and raising Claudia. He sees that pain doesn’t negate the possibility of pleasure, and good things can be built in spite of hardship. This is something I find to be true as well. The upside of this revelation is that even in moments of pain and sadness you know that there is a way to always find and build beautiful things. 

Vampire Boutique shop

Art print I bought from a street vendor artist, Custom Gambler

As someone who deals with chronic mental health issues (and has for a while), I find the idea that there can be beauty despite underlying pain to be incredibly uplifting. It means I don’t have to wait for my struggles to be resolved in order to experience any form of happiness. On the scale of my single unimportant life, it is the difference between simply surviving and properly living in the day to day world. Because of this, it is vitally important to find reasons to keep going and to enjoy life as a way to resist the negativity in the world. New Orleans is a city that seems to embrace sadness and the macabre, and instead of being bogged down by it, it expresses it through art, music, and community. 

New Orleans is undoubtedly a city built on a lot of pain. It was built from the beginning with a system of slavery like the rest of the South, meaning the city was literally founded on the suffering and dehumanization of the majority of its population. As time went on, although slavery got abolished, the systematic oppression of Black people was never dealt with and therefore only evolved to be more subtle in the modern world. Although an amazing culture was formed out of it, the undercurrent of pain can still be felt in every aspect of it. 

The simple geography of New Orleans is another source of pain. The weather of the swamp doesn’t lend itself to civilization, and the onslaught of heat and storms makes it seem like a very hostile place to make home. In 2005, the entire city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, leaving everyone who lived there with only scraps of their former life. The entire city had to completely rebuild. 

So many of the beautiful things in this city—the music, the buildings, the museums, the rich and unique culture—were created not by ignoring the pain that ran throughout the city but as a resistance to the pain. It’s a mindset that says not to give up but to resist and fight against the sources of strife, no matter how futile it may seem. It says that beauty can come out of pain, that hurt doesn’t make good things impossible. 

Smallness and Grandness

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

-The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Panorama of the beach view from the cabin.

Upon boarding the plane, I was really excited to see Louisiana. My mom grew up there and I was looking forward to seeing this part of her past. The end of the semester had been very stressful and the idea of being able to explore literature in a different environment and getting away from Los Angeles had become more and more seductive as the weeks wore on. Pulling up to our Grand Isle cabin on Saturday evening, it was clear that this was going to be wonderfully different from the hectic life of college in the big city. 

In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin explores the difference between the typical American way of living with an emphasis on working and production and the French culture of taking pleasure in and enjoying life. Our first few days on Grand Isle were supposed to allow us to spend time in this French mindset. One of the first things that became clear about Grand Isle was its extraordinary stillness. This wasn’t a tourist spot. The beach the cabin sat atop was empty with the exception of the occasional shrimper or crab trapper. The island was still suffering from the hurricane of the past year, with many buildings in complete ruin and piles of debris lining the road. Nevertheless, the beauty and authenticity of the island were breathtaking. It was in this open land that we were given the chance to dive into the novel. 

The novel opens with the main character, Edna, lazing on the beaches of Grand Isle, just as we were all doing. The story of her time there seemed to come to life before me as I could look up from the book to the very place where she sat. We had nothing to do except read and explore. It was hard to adjust at first to the idea that we were supposed to do nothing, but it was such a welcome relief from the oppressive nature of school and the city. I was able to finally breathe. The days stretched out before us, but not in the agonizing way they seem to do when there is too much work and not enough space for thinking, rather in a way that made it seem like we were operating in nature’s time rather than on a manufactured corporate schedule. I woke up early on our first morning, still adjusting to the time change, and was greeted with a blissful quiet, the heat settling on the beach and the last shrimping boats finishing up their nighttime catch. The smallness of the town made the grandness of the ocean feel even bigger and more powerful. As more people woke up, a bunch of us walked out the few yards from the cabin to the beach. We read a bit until the heat and the sun made us seek out the warm ocean water. As we sat on the rocks just offshore, a group of dolphins swam by. Being here felt so magical.

Hurricane-struck house.

In the novel, Grand Isle offers Edna a place to get away from the constraints that society placed on her. The French focus on relaxation, both with friends and independently, gave her an escape from the creeping depression and suffocation she got from daily life. This was something that resonated a lot with me. The way life is normally, and especially at college, it’s very easy for me to fall into dark places and very hard to find my way out. This isn’t to say that leaving the city cured my depression, but not having something constantly to do and not always feeling pressured and stressed by the next thing you’re supposed to be doing is such a relief after living like that for so long. Here, in the open air, I am finally able to pause and look around at what I have instead of focusing on what else I should have done. Sitting in the world in the French way, experiencing the moment as it is rather than rushing through it, I feel so much freedom. Freedom to breathe, freedom to feel happy, freedom to see how beautiful the world can be. I can look out at the evening sky, filled with colors and clouds, and just take a minute to appreciate how beautiful the world is on its own, before people come along and fill it with business and things to do. 

Sketch of the broken jetty remains.

The true power of nature on the island was even more evident in the wake of the hurricane. On one of our days, we went to some jetties to walk out over the water only to find there was nothing left but crooked posts and wood piles where there had been structure only a year before. It emphasized how the lives of the people and the things they built were always less important than nature. The destruction of the hurricane was horrible, but the idea that what we do is so impermanent in the face of nature has a beautiful grandiosity to it. No matter how much we try to plan around it, the ocean and the sky are always there, bigger than any of us can picture. I find it important to be reminded that the stresses of human society are not really all that important always.