A Cajun in France:Journeys to Assimilations

Book excerpt: Sidney "Pierre" Bellard is not a celebrity, but for an American, he has lived a most unusual life. His first language is Cajun French, and of his father's lineage, he was the first to be a high school and college graduate. His Cajun parents only spoke a little broken English and could write only their names. No, they were not recent immigrants; their ancestors had been in America well before there was a United States or a state of Louisiana. While most subsequent immigrants to America achieved assimilation within two generations, Pierre's direct paternal family line, due to isolation and subsequent sharecropper lifestyle, took ten or more generations before one of its members, Pierre, achieved assimilation in the 1960's.Travel with Pierre on his journey to three assimilations into three different cultures where he encountered challenges such as the language barrier, lack of family educational values, relative poverty, discrimination and the chains of insecurity. Eventually, he developed two major drives that were antithetical to each other, two drives he did not become aware of until the writing of this book. The first was to master the English Language and the second was to achieve literacy in standard French.Except for Native Americans, everyone in the New World is an immigrant or descendant of immigrants. It is the author's desire that readers will become more aware of their heritage and respect the difficult transitions their ancestors endured to achieve the American dream and make their lives, as they know it, possible. Also, the reader is invited to discover France and its people through the author's experiences and impressions, experiences there that enriched his life immeasurably. Finally, as a lagniappe (a little something extra), Pierre has included a few of his personal Cajun recipes. Bon app�tit.