Cajun Sayings And Quotes

How ’bout you take this Cajun injector here,” I say, gripping the steel rod in his shorts, “and give me a shot of protein instead.

Mercy was his ice breaker, his Jolly Cajun Giant, who could get away with saying whatever he damned wanted because no one wanted to climb up on a stepladder and stop him.

H—his hand is all up under there, and he’s poking his ball sack, so I’m all, ‘What the hell are you doing, Kyle?’ and he lifts his head, serious as shit, and says, ‘Remember when I told you I losed my marbles? I musta swallowed two of ’em, cuz I found ’em. They’re in my nuts!’ 

Walter asked me to marry him again,” she said finally. Gertie gave me a knowing look. Bingo. She’d called that one correctly. “I’ll bake him a chocolate cake,” Gertie said. “It’s his favorite. Might take some of the sting out of the rejection.” Ida Belle looked over at us. “I didn’t say no.

Maybe I shouldn’t roll over and let her have him so easily. I recalled how possessive I’d been about Brandon. I thought of what Mel would say: “Stop being a puss and take your toy back. What are you—minced meat?” Selena asked him, “Will you say back there again?” He complied. With his accent, it sounded like a rumbly bag dare. “Cajun is sooo hawt, J.D.

Days after the elections of 2016, asha sent me a link to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We have to have hope, she says to me across 3,000 miles, she in Brooklyn, me in Los Angeles. We listen together as Dr. deGrasse Tyson explains that the very atoms and molecules in our bodies are traceable to the crucibles in the centers of stars that once upon a time exploded into gas clouds. And those gas clouds formed other stars and those stars possessed the divine-right mix of properties needed to create not only planets, including our own, but also people, including us, me and her. He is saying that not only are we in the universe, but that the universe is in us. He is saying that we, human beings, are literally made out of stardust. And I know when I hear Dr. deGrasse Tyson say this that he is telling the truth because I have seen it since I was a child, the magic, the stardust we are, in the lives of the people I come from. I watched it in the labor of my mother, a Jehovah's Witness and a woman who worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time, keeping other people's children, working the reception desks at gyms, telemarketing, doing anything and everything for 16 hours a day the whole of my childhood in the Van Nuys barrio where we lived. My mother, cocoa brown and smooth, disowned by her family for the children she had as a very young and unmarried woman. My mother, never giving up despite never making a living wage. I saw it in the thin, brown face of my father, a boy out of Cajun country, a wounded healer, whose addictions were borne of a world that did not love him and told him so not once but constantly. My father, who always came back, who never stopped trying to be a version of himself there were no mirrors for. And I knew it because I am the thirteenth-generation progeny of a people who survived the hulls of slave ships, survived the chains, the whips, the months laying in their own shit and piss. The human beings legislated as not human beings who watched their names, their languages, their Goddesses and Gods, the arc of their dances and beats of their songs, the majesty of their dreams, their very families snatched up and stolen, disassembled and discarded, and despite this built language and honored God and created movement and upheld love. What could they be but stardust, these people who refused to die, who refused to accept the idea that their lives did not matter, that their children's lives did not matter?

The analogy that has helped me most is this: in Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of them said, I can’t rescue everyone, therefore it’s futile; therefore my efforts are flawed and worthless, though that’s often what people say about more abstract issues in which, nevertheless, lives, places, cultures, species, rights are at stake. They went out there in fishing boats and rowboats and pirogues and all kinds of small craft, some driving from as far as Texas and eluding the authorities to get in, others refugees themselves working within the city. There was bumper-to-bumper boat-trailer traffic—the celebrated Cajun Navy—going toward the city the day after the levees broke. None of those people said, I can’t rescue them all. All of them said, I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it. And they did. Of course, working for systemic change also matters—the kind of change that might prevent calamities by addressing the climate or the infrastructure or the environmental and economic injustice that put some people in harm’s way in New Orleans in the first place.

He and his mama run swamp tours back in the bayou.” Roo flicked ashes into the trampled weeds. “Tourists really like that kind of thing, don’t ask me why. He works construction jobs, too. Mows lawns, cuts trees, takes fishermen out in his boat. Stuff like that.” “Quite a résumé.” “And not bad to look at either.” Roo arched an eyebrow. “Or haven’t you noticed?” “I don’t even know him.” “You don’t have to know him to notice.” Miranda hedged. “Well…sure. I guess he’s kind of cute.” “Cute? Kind of? I’d say that’s the understatement of the century.” “Does he have a girlfriend or something?” As Roo flicked her an inquisitive glance, she added quickly, “He keeps calling me Cher.” Clearly amused, Roo shook her head. “It’s not a name, it’s a…” She thought a minute. “It’s like a nickname…like what you call somebody when you like them. Like ‘hey, love’ or ‘hey, honey’ or ‘hey, darlin’. It’s sort of a Cajun thing.” Miranda felt like a total fool. No wonder Etienne had gotten that look on his face when she’d corrected him about her name. “His dad’s side is Cajun,” Roo explained. “That’s where Etienne gets that great accent.” Miranda’s curiosity was now bordering on fascination. She knew very little about Cajuns--only the few facts Aunt Teeta had given her. Something about the original Acadians being expelled from Novia Scotia in the eighteenth century, and how they’d finally ended up settling all over south Louisiana. And how they’d come to be so well known for their hardy French pioneer stock, tight family bonds, strong faith, and the best food this side of heaven. “Before?” Roo went on. “When he walked by? He was talking to you in French. Well…Cajun French, actually.” “He was?” Miranda wanted to let it go, but the temptation was just too great. “What’d he say?” “He said, ‘Let’s get to know each other.’” A hot flush crept up Miranda’s cheeks. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, and she was totally flustered. Maybe Roo was making it up, just poking fun at her--after all, she didn’t quite know what to make of Roo. “Oh,” was the only response Miranda could think of.

Before?” Roo went on. “When he walked by? He was talking to you in French. Well…Cajun French, actually.” “He was?” Miranda wanted to let it go, but the temptation was just too great. “What’d he say?” “He said, ‘Let’s get to know each other.

Via the power of the swamplands I cast a double-decker Gris-Gris on my pirogue, to give Ol’ Alfonse a VERY, Very Nasty bellyache.” “Hey now Cricket,” How-Ya-Do scolded, “you better watch-out playing around with them Voodoo spells.” “Says who,” Cricket countered combatively. “You know you ain’t supposed to Conja no Gris-Gris. You be just “a little Cajun-girl,” not a Voodoo Priestess, like Madame Teche” How-Ya-Do reminded her, “what are you gonna do if that Gris-Gris bounces off of a tree `n whammies somebody-else by mistake?

Even though he could—and most likely would—come if Tommy touched him. Tom waited until he was right in front of him, then said, “No fucking way, Proph—you’re not coming until I say you are.” “How the hell . . .?” Right. Cajun voodoo crap. Tom

What could I say about Bellingrath Junior High? Not much, except it was named after my secret hero, Bernard Bellingrath. But Barney wasn’t the kind of hero who rescued a kid from a burning building or found a cure for a disease. Barney dropped a big load of money on our school to build the gym, stadium, and later the library annex. As his reward, a faded portrait hung on the wall of the visitors’ area inside the main entrance. But that wasn’t the reason he was my hero. According to legend, Barney had been born with a tail. A tail. Grand-mere Robichaud, who’d once seen such a tail on a baby’s pink bottom, said he could’ve been mistaken for the main course at a cochon de lait—a Cajun pig roast. But Barney’s parents were very religious, so they refused to have the tail removed. In spite of that decision, Barney grew up to be the richest and most powerful man in town. But that still wasn’t the reason he was my hero. The fact that he decided to keep the tail anyway—that was the reason. Now, all these years later, you’d think physical imperfections would be tolerated at a school practically founded by someone with a tail. But no.

Lucy comes from a long line of Cajun police officers and lunatics who have taught her an appreciation for the odder things in life. She doesn’t want to believe in the paranormal, but when fate knocks her in the head . . . sometimes you just have to say . . . maybe it’s all...

Saying goodbye, Joanna hugged Esmeralda and whispered, “Be prepared. Beau Landry is beautiful.” She pulled back and chuckled. “I thought you would like to know. No one warned me.” Esmeralda covered a giggle and said, “Okay.” “I am quite serious. He is unbelievably handsome.” Joanna’s brown eyes flashed as she pretended to fan herself. Esmeralda laughed, “I’ve only ever had eyes for one man.” “He is not a man. He is a French Cajun god.” —Lady Joanna ben Luke and Esmeralda ben Claude

Looking into his eyes instead of where she was stepping, she put her foot too far to the edge of the step and as she shifted her weight forward to get onto the boat, her foot slid and she ended up falling into Chase. He caught her—also like some stupid romantic movie—but the bag she was holding whacked him in the leg and he winced. She looked down. It didn’t just hold strands of lights. There was also a big, hard plastic, gold-glitter covered star. With very sharp points. One of which was poking into his leg. Bailey quickly shifted to move the bag away from his leg but that only managed to press her hips into his. And the big, hard shape behind his fly. Her eyes flew to his face. He was looking down at her. His expression held pain, amusement, heat, and exasperation all at once. Impressively. “Sorry I’m poking you,” she said, her voice breathless. “I was going to say the same.” His grin registered before his words did.

Let’s just say this. Do the words voodoo, live chickens, a love potion, and two dingbat females riding a Harley mean anything to you?

There was something about a man who could say darlin’ in a husky, slow croon that could make any girl melt.

The fact is that there is no “American people.” There are people who live on the North American continent, but that also includes Canadians and Mexicans. There are people who live within the political union called the United States of America. Perhaps those are the Americans. But to say that America is one nation, a single, homogenous and well-defined people, is a massive stretch. If we are “one people,” then it seems unusual that we would all readily identify ourselves as something other than simply American. While “American” is a handy term, much like “European” or “Asian,” it ignores the fact that those who most would call “American” more regularly identify themselves and others as something other than “American.” People in Texas clearly identify themselves as Texans. People in South Louisiana are quick to identify themselves as Cajuns. People across the southern States clearly identify themselves as Southerners, just as folks in the Midwest identify themselves as Midwesterners. Californians are some of the quickest to let a person know that they identify with their home State.