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Cajun Women and Mardi Gras: Reading the Rules Backward

Amazon.com Price:  $18.40 (as of 26/03/2019 21:05 PST- Details)

Description

Cajun Women and Mardi Gras is the first book to explore the importance of women’s contributions  to the country Cajun Mardi Gras tradition, or Mardi Gras “run.” Most Mardi Gras runs–masked begging processions during the countryside, led by unmasked capitaines–have customarily excluded women.  Male organizers provide an explanation for that this rule protects not only the tradition’s integrity but in addition women themselves from the event’s rowdy, continuously drunken, play. 

Throughout the last century, and especially within the last fifty years, women in some prairie communities have insisted on taking more active and public roles within the festivities. Carolyn E. Ware traces the history of women’s participation as it has expanded from supportive roles as cooks and costume makers to more and more public performances as Mardi Gras clowns and (in a minimum of one community) capitaines. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork interviews and remark in Mardi Gras communities, Ware makes a speciality of the festive actions in Tee Mamou and Basile to show how women are reshaping the celebration as creative artists and innovative performers. 


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