{"id":93922,"date":"2015-04-16T14:42:15","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T18:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=93922"},"modified":"2022-09-02T10:06:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T14:06:53","slug":"rice-defosse-co-authors-history-of-twin-cities-franco-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/04\/16\/rice-defosse-co-authors-history-of-twin-cities-franco-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Rice-DeFosse co-authors history of Twin Cities&#8217; Franco-Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_93955\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93955\" class=\"wp-image-93955\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev-707x900.jpg\" alt=\"Staff of Lewiston's French-language newspaper Le Messager, circa 1910.  From &quot;The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn\u201d courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.\" width=\"400\" height=\"509\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev-707x900.jpg 707w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev-236x300.jpg 236w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev-157x200.jpg 157w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/LeMessager-rev.jpg 848w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-93955\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Staff of Lewiston&#8217;s French-language newspaper Le Messager, circa 1910. From &#8220;The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,\u201d courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Even though Bates professor Mary Rice-DeFosse and James Myall have studied Lewiston-Auburn&#8217;s Franco-American community for years, it can still surprise them.<\/p>\n<p>While researching their new book, <em>The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn <\/em>(The History Press), the first comprehensive history of this community written for a general audience, they encountered a few shocks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were lots of little details that were hidden even to people who had looked at that history for quite a long time,&#8221; says Myall, former coordinator of the University of Southern Maine&#8217;s Franco-American Collection and now executive director of the Freeport Historical Society.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest bombshells (&#8220;I have trouble just picking one,&#8221; he says) came from early 20th-century local newspaper accounts of Franco-American children playing in the city dump in Little Canada (Lewiston&#8217;s Franco-American neighborhood) \u2014 a structural reminder of the discrimination and oppression new immigrant groups often face.<\/p>\n<p>The authors were not the only ones to be surprised by the stories the book uncovered. &#8220;Although Franco-Americans are proud of their history, they don&#8217;t know how much they have to be proud of,&#8221; says Rice-DeFosse, a professor of French and Francophone studies.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<ul>\n<li><em>On April 27, 2015, Rice-DeFosse will be one of three faculty from Maine colleges and universities to receive the Maine Campus Compact&#8217;s Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence. &#8220;Her community-engaged work hits the faculty trifecta,&#8221; says Bates Harward Center director Darby Ray, &#8220;as it involves substantial service to the off-campus community, innovative pedagogy and published scholarship.&#8221; In 2014,<\/em> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/05\/20\/rice-defosses-community-work-honored-by-maine-legislature\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rice-DeFosse was inducted into the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame<\/a><\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Myall and Rice-DeFosse saw a need for the book within the Franco-American community, to share with its members the details of their rich history, but they also wrote the book for a wider audience, to cast doubt on popularly held beliefs about immigrant identity and assimilation in America.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_93931\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93931\" class=\"wp-image-93931 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059-400x300.jpg\" alt=\"Sylvia and Rosaire Roy at WCOU Studios on Lisbon Street, Lewiston, circa 1945. Courtesy University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059-900x674.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059-144x107.jpg 144w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-Book-singers-059.jpg 1442w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-93931\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sylvia and Rosaire Roy at WCOU Studios on Lisbon Street, Lewiston, circa 1945. From &#8220;The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,&#8221; courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;We have a notion of the American melting pot: immigrants come, the first generation doesn&#8217;t speak any English, the second generation learns English and the third generation is assimilated,&#8221; Rice-DeFosse says. &#8220;And Maine&#8217;s Franco-Americans do not follow that pattern.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Rice-Defosse and Myall reveal in their book an extraordinarily resilient community of Americans who have managed to preserve their French and French-Canadian roots since they started to arrive in the Twin Cities in the mid-19th century to work in the Androscoggin River mills.<\/p>\n<p>The chapters, organized chronologically, are divided into short sections that cover material spanning arts (early 20th-century Lewiston was once dubbed the &#8220;Athens of French America&#8221;), festivals (like the 1925 snowshoe convention\/&#8221;beer fest&#8221; held openly during Prohibition) and religion \u2014 the Church of SS Peter and Paul, an iconic building of the Lewiston-Auburn skyline, was built by 1936 on the &#8220;nickels and dimes&#8221; of faithful Franco-American parishioners. (It was reclassified as a basilica in 2005.)<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_93930\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93930\" class=\"wp-image-93930 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043-400x267.jpg\" alt=\"A child at an unknown textile mill in Lewiston, circa 1900. Courtesy University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/C9-Franco-book-child-043.jpg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-93930\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A child at an unknown textile mill in Lewiston, circa 1900. From &#8220;The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,&#8221; courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The book proceeds into the present, finishing with the reaction of the Franco-American community to the influx of African refugees (some of whom speak French) and the gubernatorial race between incumbent Paul LePage and U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud \u2014 two Franco-American candidates. &#8220;We really took it right up to the wire, considering we were writing about things that were happening the week before,&#8221; Myall says.<\/p>\n<p>The co-authors, who had previously worked together on the board of the Franco-American Collection, enjoyed the collaboration. &#8220;We complemented each other nicely between a historical perspective \u2014 my primary interest \u2014 and Mary&#8217;s interest in the language and culture,&#8221; Myall says.<\/p>\n<p>Myall and Rice-DeFosse brought to the book research that dovetailed to form a complete portrait of the Franco-American community.<\/p>\n<p>Rice-DeFosse has worked with Bates students, particularly those in her course titled &#8220;French in Maine,&#8221; for years to collect the oral histories of local Franco-American residents. While the interviews started as a way for her students to practice their French language in the community, they evolved into an indispensable source of history.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have a record of a number of people&#8217;s lives, their life stories\u2026that was the reason we were able to do the book,&#8221; Rice-DeFosse says.<\/p>\n<p>Myall brought his knowledge of the huge amounts of information housed in the Franco-American Collection. The collection, the University of Southern Maine&#8217;s store of Franco-American archival material (and one of the largest in the state of Maine), contains a plethora of primary sources \u2014 old newspapers, diaries, recipe books and thousands of images. Most are donations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We really appreciate [that] the information we were getting came mostly from the community in one form or another,&#8221; Myall says.<\/p>\n<p>That is what makes The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn not only a compelling read for American history buffs, but a source of empowerment for the community itself.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people say, &#8216;Thank you for recognizing our history and writing down these things that we all knew, but nobody has written down before,'&#8221; says Myall of reactions to the book. &#8220;But then there&#8217;s also another group of people\u00a0\u2014 or the same group of people \u2014 who sometimes say, &#8216;This is great; I never even knew this about my own heritage.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The potential audience for this book extends well beyond the Lewiston-Auburn city limits. Myall encourages anyone from Maine and New England, a region rich in Franco-American influence, to read about this important population.<\/p>\n<p>Rice-DeFosse sees connections in this history for the study of all people who live in border communities, &#8220;who in fact are fully American, in every sense, but who also have retained culture and sometimes language over generations.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While researching &#8220;The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,&#8221; historian James Myall and Bates French professor Mary Rice-DeFosse encountered a few shocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":93956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,130,31],"tags":[3662,10721,10830,5736,11033],"class_list":["post-93922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-collaboration","category-lewiston-auburn","tag-franco-americans","tag-french","tag-lewiston-auburn","tag-mary-rice-defosse","tag-student-contributors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93922"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148448,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93922\/revisions\/148448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}