Examining Identity in Louisiana’s 19th-Century Black Literature
Slave narratives were a central genre of African American literature in antebellum America. Still, some authors wrote fiction works, the first of whom is recorded to be Victor Séjour, a Louisianian whose native language was French. In 1837, he published a short story bearing the title “Le Mulâtre” (“The Mulatto”). This work is considered as the first fiction written by an African American ever to be published in the United States.
The African American French-speaking community in Louisiana, and especially in New Orleans, dated back to the 17th century and the colonization of the region by France. During the 18th century, many African Americans were enslaved in Louisiana. Others migrated from Santo Domingo, which was under French rule, to settle in the region of New Orleans, thus contributing to the development of a large Francophone group of African descent. As the Europeans of New Orleans were mostly of Spanish and French origin, French was the vehicular language used between individuals, explaining the use of French in African American Louisianian literature.
When the territory of Louisiana, stretching from modern-day Montana to the Gulf of Mexico, was acquired by the United States in 1803, the use of the French language and French Creole—a mix of French, Caribbean, and African languages—took a new form: that of a cultural identification and separation with the English-speaking authorities. Reading, writing, and living with French was a way to assert one’s identity. 1 In this context, Séjour’s works appear as an assertion of one’s proper fight for his heritage. A fervent opponent to slavery, this African American author was educated in a rich family and spent most of his career in Paris. Séjour’s time in France contributed to a rediscovery of French-speaking Louisianians in the French upper-class. Even though most of his works are directed to a French audience, and do not address American slavery directly, the rediscovery of this author by American researchers in the 20th century reestablished his position as an abolitionist.
Séjour’s important literary work—short stories, novels, plays, and poetry—was not the only French-written production in nineteenth-century Louisiana. Throughout the century, several African American authors, whether they were former slaves or born in freedom, published their works in French. To that extent, the publication in 1843 of Les Cenelles (The Hawthorn Berries) as the first book published in North America by people of African descent has been described as a “manifesto” by some critics. 2
This volume contained various poems written by seventeen Black Creole authors. In the context of nineteenth-century Louisiana, Creoles can be defined as people who had a French background, with no distinction of race. In Les Cenelles, all the contributors shared an African heritage. The editor of the book, Armand Lanusse, is believed to have studied in Paris, as had many of the contributors. All the poems in this volume were dedicated to “le beau sexe” (“the fair sex”), that is, women. Passion, true love, beauty, and dedication are the key themes that constitute this refreshing book, giving readers a new perspective on African American poetry in antebellum America. Lanusse’s role though was not only literary. He contributed to the education of French-speaking African Americans in Louisiana with the foundation of the Catholic Institute for Indigent Orphans.
In Nos hommes et notre histoire (Our Men and Our History), published in 1911, Rodolphe Desdunes, an African American Louisianian author who took an active part in the defense of civil rights in the South, explains that the contributors to Les Cenelles “did not enjoy the same advantages as other men, because of restriction laws and social prejudices.” He adds later on that “we want to save from oblivion the names of the seventeen Creoles who, at the cost of great sacrifices, took the trouble of writing a book for our glory, even though they were submitted to all sorts of civil, political, and social depravation, without benefiting from the liberty to complain.” Desdunes also points out the references to inequalities between African Americans and white Americans hinted in the volume. The first poem of Les Cenelles is about the hope within a fruitful and reciprocal love. The last one, however, expresses the disillusion of the narrator in his wish of reaching happiness. Desdunes thus concludes the introduction to his book saying that the authors sought to expose the fact that “the sweet pleasures of any satisfaction could not last in a place where the freedom of some was not equal to that of others.” His last thought on the Louisianian society reminds us that it was a place “where the individual coming from a certain birth only went through ephemeral joys, to then fall back into sadness, as he remembered his fate.”
The question of one’s submission to his fate is an important axis in Desdunes’s presentation of the authors who contributed to Les Cenelles. For him, resistance resided in solidarity for African Americans to be entirely free in an oppressive society. Values such as honor, honesty and dignity thus did not correspond to individual ventures to emancipate, through politics for instance. In Desdunes’s opinion, since people of African descent were under “tyranny,” political activism was limited for it depended on the oppressor’s acceptance of such an involvement.
Thus, African Americans had to keep to the values they defended and show that they were as important as any other person. For Desdunes, “There is honor in suffering for one’s principles.” For this reason, the authors of Les Cenelles did not get directly into the fight for the abolition of slavery even though they all despised it. Indeed, this lack of activism was not synonymous to a lack of interest in the freedom of African Americans. Lanusse himself, in Desdunes’ words, “did not flatter himself of his being American. And the Creole instinct was more pronounced in him than his attachment to the title of Louisianian.” Yet, some intellectuals did participate such as Paul Trévigne, who wrote satirical articles in diverse newspapers and directly condemned slavery. Desdunes states about this author that “nothing more than the sight of this man of color taking his spot in the intellectual domain would ignite the fire of indignation in the Democrat. Everything that he could say, do or write to defend his rights, enhance his progress or prove his worth was qualified as impertinence, aggression or audace by the other.”
Speaking French represented the opportunity for the wealthy African American authors of Louisiana to have a way to escape their situation in the United States. Séjour indeed “was forced to move away from the country where he was born, because of the supposed bounds of his race’s prejudice.” France, which had abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848, was thus the place where African Americans could “breathe the air of freedom.” Many of the contributors of Les Cenelles were educated in France, came back to Louisiana, and returned to France “where they could enjoy the freedom and all the advantages that science, literature and the arts offer to the spirits which feed on them.” Of course, the French society was marked by racism too, and métis (mixed-race) authors as popular as Alexandre Dumas suffered from it daily. Still, leaving for Europe represented an opportunity for these Louisianian authors, most of whom were part of a very small and privileged community of African Americans.
Les Cenelles and all the individual works its contributors produced did not mark literary history as other African American writings did. In the United States and in the French-speaking world, the names of Séjour, Trévigne, and Desdunes have lost their importance. And yet, these African American authors of Louisiana used literature to show their freedom. Writing was an act of resistance, and using the French language was an act of identity affirmation, in a region more and more prone to Anglo-American influence. Authors such as Lanusse and Séjour never gave up their attachment to their African and Latin heritage, which they represented in their writings.
