Bayou folk
Subtitle: and, A night in Acadie
By: Kate Chopin ; edited with an introduction and notes by Bernard Koloski.
Contributors: Koloski, Bernard, 1937-; Chopin, Kate, 1851-1904.
Series: Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 369
Subjects: Louisiana -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Other titles: Night in Acadie.
Description: In the decade before the appearance of her landmark novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin published Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), collections of stories set in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Celebrations of people in their communities, the forty-four stories here depict a diversity of characters: Creoles, Acadians, and "Americans," people of color and of mixed blood, Native Americans and immigrants, adults and children, the educated and the illiterate, the rich and the poor.

Some stories focus on the restrictions women face as they seek self-fulfillment - a theme Chopin would develop fully in The Awakening - but many show people striving to establish better lives amid the devastation following the Civil War. With a compassionate, knowing gaze, Chopin not only evokes the distant world of plantations and 'Cadian balls, but also anticipates the thoroughly modern, multi-ethnic, gender-sensitive, and sexually charged world that we know today.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xxv-xxviii).