Gumbo Ya-Ya [Paperback]

In these classic, fascinating, and often terrifying tales--Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls, the Zulu King, Loup Garou, and the headless horseman of Natchitoches--all share the stage. Ghost stories from around Louisiana mingle with the true horrors of figures such as the infamous New Orleans Axeman. Learn stories of the Creoles and Cajuns, Southern church traditions, Voodoo rituals, hexes, and charms.??Gumbo Ya-Ya, everybody talks at once, expresses the tension between refinement and profanity, the sacred and the sensual--which defines Louisiana culture to this day. This 80th Anniversary Pelican Publishing unabridged edition's contents are wholly true to the 1945 original edition. First commissioned as a project of the Works Progress Administration Louisiana Writers' Program, it has stood the test of time and is a book beloved by historians, locals, and visitors.

Lyle Saxon (1891-1946) is renowned as one of Louisianas foremost authors. He was the central figure in the states literary community during the 1920s and 1930s and well known as a raconteur and bon vivant. He divided his time between his house in New Orleans and a cottage on the Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches. During the 1930s he headed the Louisiana WPA Writers Project, which produced the WPA Guide to Louisiana and the WPA Guide to New Orleans. According to Chance Harvey in The Life and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon (available from Pelican), Saxon was also the local patron to fledgling artists who flocked to him with great devotion. Edward Dreyer was the assistant state director of the Louisiana Writers' Project under the Louisiana State Library and the WPA program. As a young man in the 1940s, he worked to collect folktales from around Louisiana. Robert Tallant was one of Louisianas best-known authors. During the last years of his life, he was a lecturer in English at Newcomb College.