By Denis Ledoux

"Where are you from?”

“Here.”

“Well, you don’t sound like you’re from here.”

But I do sound like I’m from here. I sound like the majority of people who live in Lewiston and Biddeford and Old Town and Waterville. Like people from the St. John Valley.

Author Denis Ledoux

I am not the first Franco-American writer to be impelled by a need to portray my culture as being from “here,” but I consciously choose Franco-America as both my subject and my audience. My goal has not been to articulate an American experience but to give voice to a Franco-American one.

Us. Not American “us,” nor white ”us,” nor New England “us,” but…

Franco-American “us!”

The relationship with “us,” to tell the truth, is not entirely easy.

I was once a guest speaker at a Franco social club in Central Maine. This club is one of a dwindling number of Franco-American organizations throughout Maine and New England whose mission includes a mixture of entertainment, cultural promotion, benevolence, and bingo.

I spoke about Franco-American literature and arts. Starting with the serialized novels that had appeared in the French-language newspapers-in Lewiston, Biddeford, Fall River, Holyoke, Lowell- in the late nineteenth century, I proceeded to speak about early attempts at the English-language novel, quickly reviewing Jack Kerouac and Grace de Repentigny Metalious. I wrapped up with contemporary writers such as David Plante, whose work had, somewhat recently, been a finalist for a National Book Award.

“Thank you for all the work you’ve done for Franco-American literature,” said a kindly woman.

Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Praising Portland Magazine for "original regional coverage and literary merit," the New York Public Library has purchased the magazine's backlist to 1986 for their permanent collection. www.portlandmonthly.com

“It’s lovely of you to acknowledge my contributions. Contemporary Franco-American writers and artists need your acknowledgement and praise. But we need something else, too. Praise does not pay the mortgage! We need your financial support.”

To show how easy this could be, I waved toward a table where many of these titles were displayed. There were music tapes by Josée Vachon, Lillian Labbé, Lucie Therrien, story tapes by Michael Parent, poetry and novels by a dozen writers.

I sold three titles.

This crowd spent more on bingo than on Franco-America. They would not-in fact, could not because they lacked the tradition-support the articulation of a contemporary version-or vision-of “us.” Of our entire culture’s institutions, there was little else besides the social clubs left.

One hundred years and four generations ago, five if you count my children, my ancestors-impelled by their own needs-had committed me to being from “here.” I longed to be from some other place, but I do not belong elsewhere either.

Folklore is the language too many Franco-Americans use when they want to speak about “us.” It is an insidious tool, a trap, really, because it fossilizes cultural experience by celebrating something as if it were alive rather than dead. Folklore’s fond representations of the same few foods and dances, the same verse or two of the same well-remembered few songs, may remind us of our childhoods in a comforting way or of the grandparents who loved us, but folklore cannot light up the present with its soft-focus light of nostalgia.

Folklore takes up so much space in Franco-America that there is little room left for a contemporary culture to make a place for itself.

With its weight of folklore, the history of “us” is announcing its end.

Our personal and group history is subject to becoming folklore. As a storyteller and story collector, I am often offered apocryphal stories that people share with me as if they are offering a piece of the puzzle that will make the Franco-American story clear at last. They tell family stories that have been altered over the years and these stories almost always purport to be group stories. But, they are not; they are altered family stories.

People will tell me, “My grandfather was the first Franco-American to settle in this town.” Usually, the date they provide is at least a generation after the first known Franco inhabitant settled there. Or, “My father was the first Franco-American to…” Again, whatever the achievement is, it probably occurred a generation or two too late to be a first!

Liz Vallerie (left) and Dawna Bonneau work together at Portland’s B&W Typography and share a Franco-American heritage. Dawna says, "I try to go to the Festivale de Joie in Lewiston in the summer, because my grandfather serves breakfast there. It’s fun to see him and his friends singing French songs and dancing and making crepes – they have such a good time.” Liz says, “Now and then, an ‘eh’ falls from my lips and a companion will say, Wow, you really are French!”

As a rule, Franco-Americans have little awareness of their group history. Instead, we make family-sized stories into group stories. We don’t know the difference and we seem to like it that way: it excuses us from the complexity of taking a serious look at society, at politics, at the bigger meaning and role of our people in the history of Maine and of North America.

We say: “Franco-Americans like …”

Or perhaps it’s “Franco-Americans don’t like…”

It’s as though any one of us can make up an entire cultural profile based on our own childhood and claim it as the community experience of an entire people.

(If an Anglo-American were to say, because her family is musical, “Yankees love to sing. They sing every time they get together,” we would recognize an unfounded statement.)

The most difficult anecdotes for me to hear are those that reduce history simply to personal issues. “They came down to work in the mill because they were not able to make a living on the farm” is often presented as the cause of migration among Franco-Americans. The truth is of course much more complicated. History books don’t say that Puritans couldn’t make it in England or were failures so they drifted here; instead, they are portrayed as champions of religious freedom who actively chose to come here to seek a better life.

Where would contemporary Franco-Americans have learned their people’s history? In public school?

“You can expect that sixty percent of your students are Franco-American,” I pointed out after the program. “It would be important to them to include a French song-or a song in translation." It simply hadn’t occurred to her.

Hardly. I remember attending my younger sister’s school music recital. She was then in the sixth grade. The teacher had prepared a multicultural program. The children sang an Amish song, an African-American spiritual, and a few other pieces that were genuine attempts to teach beyond the standard homogenizing school repertoire.

“You can expect that sixty percent of your students are Franco-American,” I pointed out after the program. “It would be important to them to include a French song-or a song in translation.”

It simply hadn’t occurred to her. There was something invisible about her students.

Invisible even in Lewiston.

Franco Maine history falls into two distinct eras. The first takes place before 1800; the second, after 1800. The earliest of the French stories includes the Ste. Croix settlement in 1604, the explorations of Sieur de Monts, the settlement of the Baron de Castin. This period of seventeenth century Franco history has left a few place names like Mt. Desert and Castine and little else.

The eighteenth-century Franco stories are dominated by the rich and deliciously heroic tales that fed my childhood: the story of French Jesuit missionaries such as those in The Black Robe. The years these Jesuits spent with the Indians contributed to alliances between the Indians and the French. In Maine, the best known of these Jesuits was Sabastien Rasle, perhaps because he was killed by an English raid seeking to eliminate French influence. For 20 years, Rasle had eluded the English raiders as he lived with Abenakis.

Within two decades of the murder of Rasle, most of the surviving Western Maine Indians had made their way north to Canada (explaining the lack of an Indian community in Western Maine). In the next generation, they participated on the French side of what Americans call the French and Indian War.

- Next Page -