SAGE Series Presents “A Cajun Girl’s Sharecropping Years”

As part of the fall 2019 SAGE series, author Viola Fontenot will present a lecture titled, “A Cajun Girl’s Sharecropping Years,” at 3 p.m., Monday, Oct. 7, in the McNeese State University SEED Center.

Living as tenants on tracts of farmland in exchange for a one-third share of the profit generated from their crops, sharecroppers in Louisiana’s southern parishes helped shape the state’s rich cultural history. While accounts of sharecropping have been dominated by male voices, Fontenot’s lecture, based on her book of the same title, brings a female perspective to this time period and way of life.

The daughter of a sharecropper in Church Point, Fontenot’s lecture introduces audiences to life in Louisiana in the first half of the 20^th century, including her experiences with field work, Cajun culture, holidays and traditions, and what it was like to grow up speaking French.

Fontenot is a retired bank officer. “A Cajun Girl’s Sharecropping Years,” is her first book and was the winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2019 Humanities Book of the Year award. Fontenot is also a contributor to the “O Malheureuse” anthology.

SAGE lectures are open to the public and cost is $69 for the series. For more information or to register, call 337-475-5616 or visit www.mcneese.edu/leisure. 

Persons needing accommodations as provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact the ADA Coordinator at 337-475-5428, voice; 337-475-5960, fax; 337-562-4227, TDD/TTY, hearing impaired; or by email at cdo@mcneese.edu.