About this item
This is the story of a free black Creole family with beginnings in French Louisiana in 1740. It's a story of struggle and triumph with an indomitable cast of characters. The narrative traces the family's beginnings from the union between a litigious runaway slave of African descent and a conniving French settler who is an early colonizer in the Louisiana territory. The book is a tribute to the slave matriarch who managed to obtain and secure her own freedom and that of her four children who advanced quickly from being slaves to slave owners. Their children become members of a land owning elite black planter class which ultimately finds itself out of place in the slave holding Deep South with the dawn of the Civil War. The book explores the plight of generations of the family's fight to remain free and in the period immediately before and after the Civil War.
About the Author
Lovey Marie Guillory was born in a small hamlet in rural Louisiana. Her hurried birth on the kitchen floor of her parents' farm house in Bois Mallet is the opening chapter of her life and her book, "Born on the Kitchen Floor in Bois Mallet." She says, "I couldn't wait to be born and I have been rushing all my life since then. I did slow down to write this first book, however. It took time to research the facts and retell the complex history of my family and pay tribute to the slave matriarch who made it possible for generations of Guillorys to be born in freedom rather than bondage. I did a lot of reading and listening and a lot of thinking about Marguerite and her children before I started to write. Books and private papers were helpful but I had to look elsewhere to understand the forces that were at work in her life and the generations that followed. We write best about what we know so I went back to that basic rule. I unearth the stories I heard from my mother and father, grown-up conversations I had eavesdropped on as a child, family traditions and taboos, and the social isolation that my family experienced. I traced my own life back in time and remembered the people, the woods, the pasture, the fields, the feasts and the foods, and the scents that nurtured us. These were the matrix that allowed me to get a glimpse of Marguerite's spirit, write about my own journey, and tell the story of the struggles and triumphs of many generations in my family."
