Common Bond
Having been born from the union of a Cormier and a Prudhomme there is no question about the legitimacy of my Louisiana nature. Still, a sense of soulful belonging tended to evade me as a child and teenager. In south Louisiana,…
Author: Illustration by Christina Brown
Of Talent and Timing
If someone asked what my last meal on earth would be, I’d choose Uncle Robert’s elaborate, multi-course Thanksgiving feast enlivened by his piano renditions of Broadway musicals. The darling of the Hebert family, “Rabbit” cooked like Joël Robuchon with the…
Plus ça change: We've seen this movie before
If you are much younger than I am, you probably don’t remember drive-ins. As a child, I went to one which was often packed with rows of cars parked before a ginormous screen. Tinny speakers cradled on rolled-down windows provided…
Lettres d'amour: Southern Comfort
The irony of South Louisiana’s beauty is that it can’t go unnoticed, but it can easily be undervalued. There’s so much food, music and culture to digest, but for someone that’s been in these swampy lands all of his life,…
Lettres d'amour / Lost and Found
By Herbert J. Wilt I was reared by my grandparents in Breaux Bridge in St. Martin Parish. It was there I heard, on a daily basis, the Kréyòl language spoken by all who came to visit. Throughout my childhood, the…
Lettres d'amour: Uncovering History
After retiring from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2013 as Dean of the then-College of General Studies and Professor of Communicative Disorders, I assumed that my retirement years would be a period of extended leisure and relaxation. Instead,…
2020 Carnival Calendar
While New Orleans is the most well-known place in Louisiana to celebrate Mardi Gras, Louisianians know there are lively parades and events for weeks all over the state. From Shreveport to Eunice and everywhere in between, here's your guide to…
Lettres d'Amour
Definitely an acquired taste. That’s the inescapable conclusion of one who didn’t grow up here but has dwelt here for 30 years, gradually transitioning from outsider to insider. Ironically, I was born in Baton Rouge, in the very hospital where…
Lettres d'amour: Parlez Français Tous les Jours
Throughout my first visit to New Brunswick, in late 2018, I was amazed. As I toured Canada’s only bilingual province, French and English were visible everywhere — in government and on signs, media and the service industry. I asked myself:…
Lettres d'amour: Paying Attention on Bayou Teche
“Pay attention, and it will break your heart a dozen times before dinner,” wrote Margaret Renkl in “Surviving Despair in the Great Extinction,” in The New York Times Opinion section on May 13, 2019. I have been blessed to live…
Lettres d'amour: Old Songs and Old Cypress
I’m a folklorist by training, and explaining what that means can be tricky. One way to say it that folklorists often deal with lost things. The hard truth is that, as society evolves, things fall by the wayside, often beautiful…
Lettres d'amour: Red Brick Road
In one of my earliest memories, I’m toddling around the concrete edges of the Girard Park duck pond, looking up at my father. He’s in his 20s, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. The specific details are as murky…
Lettres d’amour: Raconte
Stories have always been part of the fabric of my life growing up in South Louisiana. It’s how my family passed time. No matter what any of us were supposed to be doing — driving from Houma to Gatlinburg, Tennessee…
Lettres d'amour: Sunday Repast
Though he lived and worked all the way in Baton Rouge, my Uncle Lambert would make the trip every Sunday with his wife Faye (my dad’s sister), and their daughter Lorna to my grandfather’s house in Bayou Portage, a tiny…
Sense of Place
My entrée into writing novels began with an embarrassing idea. I imagined that being a newspaper journalist, I could whip out popular paperbacks as fast as breaking news. To make matters worse, my first historical romance was set along the…
Becoming Cajun
A shuttle ride in Houston sets a young teen on the course to learn his culture
