Joan DeJean is trustee professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of twelve books on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, including How Paris Became Paris and The Essence of Style. She was born in southwest Louisiana, and now lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Paris, France.
"An array of impressive primary sources... guide the overarching
theme of this groundbreaking study, revealing the importance of
these women in the early years of French colonization of the Third
Coast." --CHOICE
"Their lives became early examples of the American dream, and of
its violence... In their previously little-known stories is a
concise picture of all that makes U.S. history remarkable and
troubling."--The Atlantic
"Gripping from its opening scene of a corpse discovered on a Paris
side street, Joan DeJean's Mutinous Women tells the stories of
these French women, deported as unwanted criminals to what would
become, less than a century later, part of the United States...
Through astounding research in French and Louisiana archives... Ms.
DeJean uses her knowledge as a scholar of early modern France to
great effect. ... a fascinating history and a reminder that all
kinds of people helped to build what became the United
States."--Wall Street Journal
"Working with a chaotic and often confusing historical record,
DeJean traces the constellation of forces--including avarice,
corruption and misogyny--that permitted the rapid roundup of
another 96 or so female prisoners to be transported in the dank
hold of La Mutine. The horrific conditions of the women's journey
and the will to survive that must have sustained them when they
were set down, largely without resources, in a barren, swampy,
inhospitable land, are evoked in vivid detail." --New York Times
Book Review
"DeJean... does a wonderful job of tracing the lives of these women
through government and parish records, plotting their marriages,
deaths, births and financial fortunes through succeeding decades.
... A fascinating book for history lovers, not just academics."
--Library Journal
"Exploitation and dishonesty fueled the settling of the Gulf Coast,
and so doing rendered these women voiceless for generations. With
rich writing, author and University of Pennsylvania professor
DeJean gives the women who settled Louisiana, and their lost
stories, a long-overdue historical reckoning."--Booklist
"What transpired after they landed ashore, however, is a clear
demonstration of the beauty and power of the feminine spirit, and
DeJean chronicles their experiences in well-written, often gripping
prose....Readers will come away fascinated and inspired by this
relatively unknown tale of strength and the human spirit."--Kirkus
(starred review)
"DeJean skillfully reads between the lines of the existing police
and prison documentation to bring context and nuance to these
women's stories.... This scrupulous account restores a group of
remarkable women to their rightful place in French and American
history."--Publishers Weekly
"In a work of archival virtuosity and daring reconstruction, Joan
DeJean takes us from the villages of France to the alleys of Paris
to the bayous of Louisiana, recovering the lives of a group of
women heretofore lost to history. Exquisitely vulnerable to the
capricious forces of ambition, finance, and venality, these
indomitable women wrested control of their lives to chart new paths
for themselves and their descendants." --François Furstenberg,
professor of history, Johns Hopkins University
"Joan DeJean has written a gripping narrative of female courage and
resilience that gives the women of La Mutine a justice long denied.
Their astonishing and all-but-forgotten story will now take its
rightful place in our rapidly changing understanding of the nature
and meaning of European settlement of the New World."--Drew Faust,
Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor and president emerita,
Harvard
"This is a wonderful book, richly detailed, meticulously
researched, and beautifully written. Telling the hitherto unknown
story of a group of working-class, young women unjustly seized by
authorities from the streets of early eighteenth-century Paris,
Mutinous Women takes us on a fascinating journey from the poorer
quarters of the vast city to the emerging towns and expansive
landscapes of French Louisiana. Against all odds, after enduring
terrible privations in their homeland and a long Atlantic crossing
chained together in the hold of the frigate La Mutine, most of the
women who survived succeeded in establishing their own families and
eventually achieved a level of material comfort their native
country denied them. Joan DeJean's account offers eloquent
testimony to the courage and fortitude of these brave young women
who played a significant role in the founding of French
Louisiana."--James Horn, author of A Brave and Cunning Prince
"Mutinous Women brings to life a remarkable story, that of some two
hundred women arbitrarily deported from France to the fledgling
colony of Louisiana in 1719. Many died crossing the ocean, but
others survived to play crucial roles in the settlement of a region
that still treasures its French heritage. Joan DeJean's vivid
narrative is both an engrossing addition to the history of American
colonization and a testimony to the resilience of the human
spirit."--Jeremy Popkin, author of A New World Begins: The History
of the French Revolution
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