Afro-Creole Poetry in French from Louisiana's Radical Civil War-Era Newspapers: A Bilingual Edition

“At a time when Black Americans continue to fight for and defend their civil and political rights, and when the specter of white supremacy casts an ever larger shadow over the painstaking gains of the last 50 years, it is more important than ever to remember and learn from the cultural engagement and political legacy of New Orleans’s Afro-Creoles.” 
​—Angel Adams Parham, from the volume’s introduction

Collected here for the first time, seventy-nine poems published in the Civil War–era Afro-Creole New Orleans newspapers L’Union and La Tribune―most unavailable anywhere but in archives―bring to life a close-knit, politically progressive French-speaking community of artists and intellectuals whose cultural and legal legacies were monumental. The original French poems appear here alongside Clint Bruce’s sensitive English translations, mindful of meaning, meter, and sound.

A comprehensive introduction, biographies of the poets, and extensive annotations immerse readers in Civil War–era Louisiana. In his research for the volume, Bruce unearthed crucial issues of La Tribune long thought lost and discovered the extent of a poetic hoax undetected for nearly 150 years.

Distributed for the Historic New Orleans Collection.

Watch performances of some of the poems here!

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