Franco-America in the making: the Creole nation within

Every June the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, celebrates Franco-American Day, raising the Franco-American flag and hosting events designed to commemorate French culture in the Americas.

Though there are twenty million French speakers and people of French or francophone descent in North America, making them the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States, their cultural legacy has remained nearly invisible.

Events like Franco-American Day, however, attest to French ethnic permanence on the American topography.

In 'Franco-America in the Making,' Jonathan K. Gosnell examines the manifestation and persistence of hybrid Franco-American literary, musical, culinary, and media cultures in North America, especially New England and southern Louisiana.