The idea for this collection of writings occurred to me after hearing Paul Brouillette and Marie Louise St. Onge read their work in November, 1994, when the Center for the Arts at UMass Lowell presented “Voices Like Bridges: Ten Writers and Singer-Songwriters from the Merrimack Valley.” Two years earlier, I had co-edited and published Merrimack: A Poetry Anthology, which included poems by Susan April. A selection of my poems had recently appeared in Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings, edited by Denis Ledoux and published by his Soleil Press in Maine. I was convinced that there was room for another collection of works by contemporary French Canadian-American writers. Being engaged in cultural affairs in the Lowell area, I was eager to make these writings available to readers.

     In the fall of 1997, I was awarded a teaching assistantship in the master’s program in community social psychology at UMass Lowell. I am grateful to Dr. Charles Nikitopoulos, whose course in “Ethnic and Racial Factors in the Community” offered me an opportunity to assemble these writings as a course project. Throughout the fall we discussed issues involving identity formation, cultural conservation, and 

the dynamics of ethnic groups in community settings. My special interest in ethnic expression among Americans whose ancestors emigrated from homelands several generations ago, combined with my ongoing explorations of my French-Canadian heritage, led me to this publishing project.

     The writings in French Class speak to my core identity as a person of French-Canadian heritage who was born in Lowell and grew up next door in Dracut, a small version of “the town and the city.” In these poems and essays we have four people, artists, holding the threads of a fading ethnic subculture and tying the ends tightly to the fabric of their contemporary lives — lives saturated by the mass pop culture of late twentieth century America. In their writings they recall, hold up, hold out, rescue, and savor a distinct set of experiences steeped in the French-Canadian ways of their parents and grandparents. The authors evince a preservation ethic in their stance as keepers of stories and times. They write for the record. They write to make sense of what’s lost, and to make connections to their days.

      My father used to ask me, “Do you think you’ll ever go back?” He never expected an answer, but he kept pitching the question at the end of a long day at the mill. He would be changing out of his work shoes and toss me that question, grinning and lifting his chin for punctuation. These writings are an attempt to go back, to bring back what we learned, and hand it over to those who are listening

     The four authors of French Class represent the post-World War II generation, ethnic baby boomers, who came of age in the 1960’s amidst so much social change. While Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Cambodian, and other peoples still close to their traditional cultures made homes in Greater Lowell, daughters and sons in families of Irish, Greek, Polish, and French Canadian ancestry drifted or in some cases spun away from their particular ethnic group. As we hear in these writings, the native language and national parish were the linchpins that kept the ethnic wheels from falling off, even after the urban enclave gave way to scattered lives in the suburbs. As that post-war generation became separated from its language and often the related religious traditions, the connections loosened and sometimes were lost. The result is a generation of people in their 40’s and 50’s piecing together recollections from an enriched youth and dubbing those accented voices in their heads. This material takes on a new form in their art.

     Although there are almost one million Franco-Americans in Massachusetts, the Boston Globe recently asked why the state’s second largest ethnic group is so quiet, which in this case means politically low-key. The newspaper pointed out that no Franco-American has been elected governor in Massachusetts or as a representative in the U. S. Congress from this state. The last Franco-American to be elected to a state level office was J. Henry Goguen, the secretary of state in 1958. Outnumbered only by Irish-Americans, the Franco-Americans make up one-sixth of the Commonwealth’s population. Concentrated in cities such as Worcester (33,700), Springfield (29,400), Lowell (25,300), Boston (25,000), and Fall River (22,600), the Franco-Americans have a reputation for being a “quiet presence” in New England. Some observers say that Franco-Americans have assimilated, and therefore do not stand out. Others say they lack a high profile because they avoided wholesale discrimination upon arriving in the region.

     When we list notable New Englanders of French Canadian descent, we notice they are not too quiet: cultural conservationists Martha Pellerin Drury, Paul Paré, Normand C. Dubé, Albert V. and Barbara Côté, Roger Brunelle, Marthe Biron-Peloquin, Julien Olivier, Joseph Garreau, Paul and Monique Blanchette, Lillian Lamoureux, Rev. Armand Morissette, Armand W. LeMay, Armand P. Mercier, Aurore Dionne Eaton, Jim Bishop, and Robert B. Perrault; historians Will Durant, Raymond J. Marion, Richard Santerre, Peter Richards, Armand Chartier, and Gerard J. Brault; political scientist David E. Marion; Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette; authors Robert Cormier, Jacqueline Giasson Fuller, Rhéa Côté Robbins, and John Dufresne; Baseball Hall of Fame member Napoleon Lajoie; novelists Grace DeRepentigny Metalious, Ernest Hebert, E. Annie Proulx, and David Plante; U.S. Senator Felix Hébert, Lowell mayor Dewey G. Archambault, and Massachusetts state representative Henri Achin, Jr.; painter Richard M. Marion; Congressional Medal of Honor-winner and Spanish-American War naval veteran George Charette; editors Wilfrid Beaulieu, Claire Quintal, Denis Ledoux, and Yvon Labbé; marine veteran and Iwo Jima-flag raiser René A. Gagnon; performers Rudy Vallée and Robert Goulet; actor Robert Tessier, storyteller Michael Parent; playwright Grégoire Chabot; marathoner Joan Benoit; musicians and singers Rita Paquin, Lucie Therrien, Josée Vachon, Don Hinkley, and Lilianne Labbé; and poets Rosaire Dion-Lévesque, A. Poulin, Jr., Susann Pelletier, Steven Riel, Dorianne Laux, Bill Tremblay, and David Rivard.

     Addressing literary critic Yvonne Le Maître in 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote: “All my knowledge rests in my ‘French-Canadianness’ and nowhere else. . . . Isn’t it true that French-Canadians everywhere tend to hide their real sources. They can do it because they look Anglo-Saxon, when the Jews, the Italians, the others cannot . . . the other ‘minority’ races. I’ll never hide it again; as once I did, say in high school, when I first began ‘Englishizing myself’ to coin a term (Me faire un Anglais).” In French Class, the authors use the English language in service of their French-Canadian “knowledge.” They reveal their sources.

     Susan April misses when she tries to make a pork pie like her mother’s, but relishes it anyway, eating the whole pie herself. Each of these authors craves the connection symbolized by that pork pie. Each writes about the highly charged food connection. The food lasts and translates, as do the inventive local French- Canadian phrases that provide a soundtrack to this jump-cut movie running on four tracks. Spirituality, family, work, memory, language, food — these are the common elements in the selections.

     In his or her own way, each of the authors is also trying to move beyond memory. Each is looking for a way to make what he or she has been and has known part of an evolving life. Marie Louise St. Onge writes of the “challenge to keep alive that which most wholly represents us.” She credits the people who are the source of her hope. Paul Brouillette honors the “rootedness” found in a distinct ethnic character and looks toward new shores. Loss is catalogued here. Value is accounted for. Homage is paid. Stories and lives are saved. Connections are made. These are voices like bridges.

Paul Marion

Lowell, Massachusetts

June, 1998

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