Louisiana True: Short Books on the Things Louisianians Have to Explain

Episode 143 of the National Park Service's Preservation Technology Podcast, from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, has host Catherine Cooper talking with Jenny Keegan, trade acquisitions editor at LSU Press, who acquires its regional titles and books for general readers and runs its Louisiana True series.

The episode: "Writing about Louisiana Culture", from the National Park Service's Preservation Technology Podcast.

The idea

Louisiana True is a series of short, lively books — around 125 to 175 pages, sized to be given as gifts — each introducing one piece of Louisiana culture. The joke pitch inside the press, Keegan said, was that each book covers something a Louisianian always ends up explaining to visitors. The first, Doug MacCash's Mardi Gras Beads, went first partly because she was tired of telling people that only tourists flash for beads. It was followed by Nikesha Williams's Mardi Gras Indians, Rien Fertel's Brown Pelican and Burke Bischoff's Po'Boy, with Jonathan Olivier's Gumbo planned next.

Finding topics and authors

The series began as a press-wide effort. Marketing manager James Wilson came up with the name, staff brainstormed topics, and an all-staff email brought in many more. Keegan mostly approaches writers whose work she admires, but authors also bring ideas she had not thought of — and sometimes an idea turns out too big for the series, when a writer who planned 35,000 words finds they want to write 85,000, and becomes a standalone LSU Press book instead. She welcomes suggestions and proposals.

What keeps coming through is how remarkable Louisiana's culture is, shaped by Native peoples, French and Spanish colonization, centuries of African enslavement, and its place on the coast at the mouth of the Mississippi. The series aims to honor everyone who has brought their culture to and through the state.

Few rules, lots of room

Many of the authors have never written a book, so Keegan works closely with them. The firm guideline is length — 25 to 35 thousand words — plus explaining the basics of the food, tradition, place or custom. Beyond that, she invites creativity:

• some books are straight chronological histories;
• Brown Pelican works through snapshots of moments in time;
• Mardi Gras Indians takes a personal lens, built on Williams's interviews with Black Masking Indians about how they entered the tradition, make their suits and pass the skills to family.

Her view is that when an author enjoys the subject, readers do too, so she steers writers to what excites them most.

The readers she has in mind are Louisianians curious about where their traditions came from, and newcomers — tourists and especially people moving to the state — who want to understand why Louisiana is the way it is. Born and raised there herself, she says she has learned something new from every book, thanks to authors' interviews, archive work and old newspapers.

A blended culture

Keegan sees Louisiana's cultures — Native, Cajun, Creole and many more — living side by side, especially in New Orleans, and blending into one another, while people work hard to keep their folkways. Her favorite example is a chapter of Po'Boy on the Vietnamese po'boy: visitors ask how it differs from a bánh mì, and her answer is that it doesn't. The two traditions grew up apart and have influenced each other since many Vietnamese refugees came to Louisiana during the Vietnam War. A shared love of food, she hopes, has made the state welcoming and given immigrant communities a way in.

The series shares the goal of LSU Press, the publisher of record for LSU and the state: to show readers the cultural riches of Louisiana and the South, advancing knowledge while giving readers a good time.

Sources

Based on the National Park Service's Preservation Technology Podcast, Episode 143, "Writing about Louisiana Culture," produced by the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (public domain); the guest's words are rewritten in hubnx's own words. The transcript spells bánh mì "báhn mi".

• The episode's audio is the National Park Service's own file, from the podcast's feed.