Looming Solastalgia

How the revival of coton jaune is helping us to remember

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Environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht defines "solastalgia" as “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”, and “the lived experience of negative environmental change”. In both of these definitions, the philosopher observes the collective emotion a group feels while watching its world decline due to man-made encroachment and exploitation on a massive scale. How does a community reclaim the ground of a place it no longer recognizes as its own? In the case of South Louisiana, perhaps part of this healing begins with a single brown cotton seed.

Traditionally called “coton jaune,” brown cotton was once a staple crop in Acadiana—the main material for homespun textiles. While white cotton was grown to be sold, brown cotton was kept for use within the Cajun and Creole communities. The waxy exterior of the brown cotton’s shell and its short fiber make a less strenuous task of separating the fiber from the seed.  Most nights, families would sit around the fireplace, or on porches, deseeding cotton in their off-time. These were called "carding parties" or la cardi.

"Disconnected to the world of our ancestors, life in the modern world is a life out of balance. Many crave communion with that simpler past, to grasp onto it before it all evaporates into indifference. Here is where we find that smooth dark seed shifting from hand to hand, waiting to germinate."

Coton jaune was also vital to many rites of passages: prized as wedding dowries in the form of blankets and beddings for young brides. This trousseau was a gift that provided necessities for a whole household in a time when the Acadian exiles were almost completely isolated from outside trade. Like the Acadians, brown cotton isn’t indigenous to Louisiana—and likely has origins in South America—but under persevering hands, this light and breathable textile found itself a devoted community in a new land they could both call home.

Over the course of the twentieth century, though, coton jaune has largely disappeared from the cultural landscape of Acadiana, its cultivation and weaving practices forgotten by the modern hand.  This is not the first time Acadian culture, and its artifacts, have been at risk of disintegrating. Over the last century, Louisiana Cajuns and Creoles have seen their language threatened by the prohibition of French in public schools from 1920 to 1960. The physical landscape has fallen victim to modern day efforts to control and commodify: bayous gutted and dredged out, only to sink into the Gulf; oil and other chemical spills poisoning wildlife; a skyline, once laced by bald cypress and live oaks, replaced with oil refineries. Traditional ways of life, including weaving Acadian textiles with coton jaune, abandoned in favor of the more convenient offerings of fast fashion. Disconnected to the world of our ancestors, life in the modern world is a life out of balance. Many crave communion with that simpler past, to grasp onto it before it all evaporates into indifference. Here is where we find that smooth dark seed shifting from hand to hand, waiting to germinate.

[Read this story about the cultural preservation work, which includes the growing of brown cotton, taking place at Saint-Luc French Immersion and Cultural Center in Arnaudville.]

In recent years, along the vanishing coastline of South Louisiana, brown cotton has begun to re-emerge from the brink of indifference. A quiet and slow movement is spreading throughout the prairie grasses and roadside biomes of Acadiana. Coton jaune is once again finding its home in farms, gardens, and wild places—re-entering the lexicon of Cajun culture.

The collective Acadian Brown Cotton (ABC) has been a leader in the preservation efforts, establishing a standard for maintaining the heirloom seeds in the area, and securing hundreds of pounds of seeds in cold storage at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Cade Research Farm and Seed Bank. The organization has connected farmers and enthusiasts, and established efforts to bring brown cotton into modern day textile manufacturing. With the indispensable assistance of the organization’s founder, Sharon Donnan, I was able to meet the individuals at the heart of  this revival of agriculture, craft, and community. 

Jennie Lallande

Hand-spun spools of brown cotton rest on the wooden chair that belonged to Jennie Lallande's grandfather. Above the chair, an image of Mother Mary gazes out the window of Lallande’s farmhouse. She seems to smile slightly at the brown bolls soon to burst.  

Lallande is a member of ABC, as well as the CEO of Acadian Growers Alliance, an agriculture cooperative movement based in New Iberia. Since 2013, her nonprofit has focused on urban agriculture and coastal community resilience by rebuilding soil-to-food pathways for people in Southwest Louisiana. On her own greenspace, which was previously a cow pasture, she’s overseen a slow, deep restoration of nutrient-depleted soil since increasing biodiversity in her plot. Among the mung beans, hibiscus, and American beautyberry, brown cotton has its place as a summertime staple. 

Randon Dufrene

Another member of ABC, Randon Dufrene uses cotton as a tool for measuring time. In a world where days mesh into years and a season’s lifespan passes with little effort, he finds coton jaune a kind of metronome to ground time. “It breaks up the mundaneness of life,” Dufrene says, “the different steps, from soil preparation to seeding, create markers for time.” He watches over all this time within his forty-five-foot by ninety-foot garden, which also holds beans, sunflowers, and marigolds.

“When the Acadians were using this cotton, weaving these blankets, their clothing over time would eventually become a rag. Coton aide. They’re the dirty old cotton rags, that piece of cloth on its last leg. They would cut the excess and use it as a rag, then throw it away. It’s all compostable. This is a huge reason why we don’t see a lot of examples of what the clothing looked like.” —Randon Dufrene

“When you buy a white shirt from the store, where do they come from? Where will they end up? We can change that,” Dufrene insists. “When the Acadians were using this cotton, weaving these blankets, their clothing over time would eventually become a rag. Coton aide. They’re the dirty old cotton rags, that piece of cloth on its last leg. They would cut the excess and use it as a rag, then throw it away. It’s all compostable. This is a huge reason why we don’t see a lot of examples of what the clothing looked like.”

Larry Allain

On ABC member Larry Allain’s farm, coton jaune is intertwined with heirloom peas along two thirty-foot rows. The retired grassland botanist uses his vast accumulation of knowledge to redevelop the agricultural designs of the prairielands in Arnaudville, twenty miles north of Lafayette. His farm demonstrates the mixed-use design of prairie farming, coton jaune being an essential piece of the puzzle. Allain has spent years resurfacing techniques his ancestors developed, techniques that have been lost over time. A significant element of this stewardship is land rehabilitation, using regenerative design and subsistence farming practices, which he is extending to the next generation. His son Andre is poised to take over the farm after him. 

[Read about the efforts of the Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society, which Larry Allain is deeply involved in, in this story from our March 2023 issue.]

Elaine Bourque

Culture bearer Elaine Bourque has grown coton jaune since she was a child, after learning about it from her father. Beyond the vital task of preserving seeds, her work in preserving the textile and its traditions extends to the art of weaving. In addition to creating her own textiles, she has spent years documenting the weaving traditions of women of across Acadiana. Bourque herself apprenticed under the late Gladys Clarke—an elder who learned the art as a child in the 1920s, quickly mastered it, and went on to become a leading instructor in the community. In 1997, Clarke received recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts as a National Heritage Fellow for this work. A singular, unfaltering thread which binds together the storied tapestry of Acadian weaving, stitching the memories of yesteryear into the practice of today—Clarke holds perhaps more responsibility than anyone for keeping the tradition alive and relevant today. 

In Bourque’s home, which is filled with relics of Acadian culture, she sets down a blanket and begins examining different, precious imperfections in its weaving patterns. Hand-spun threading will vary in size. Over time, seams which fray will be repaired. Every imperfection tells a story. In her work of piecing together the past, she has dug through garages and barns for misplaced blankets and rummaged through newspaper articles to find as many details on the practice as she can find. She has a collection of blankets, many of them over one hundred years old, two of which were blankets by her great grandmothers. Beyond the research, she retraces the movements of her ancestors onto the loom, walking upon the geography of fabric to gather the wisdom and foundation of her predecessors. The pieces she makes herself, she uses or gifts to others. For Bourque, this is part of the tradition. She never sells any of her pieces; some traditions cannot be sold.

Gerald Thibodeaux

When Gerald Thibodeaux, a relative of Clarke’s, holds a shawl up to his face—rays of light pour through, revealing his outline in the thin, delicate, wavering fabric: four ply silk, smaller than a single strain of cotton, truly cobweb weight. He has been spinning and weaving since the mid-1970s, and is known throughout the community for his tight, thin, hand-spun thread. He utilizes this highly-specialized skill to create extravagantly detailed miniatures. One of these techniques is what he calls “mug rugs”: “really they’re just coasters.” For a model, he mimics the distinct patterning of Clarke’s blankets. 

[Read this story about native basket-weaving traditions from our January 2022 issue.]

Thibodeaux learned to weave from his grandmother, who would sit with him at a young age and have him follow her hands along the loom. He ran the Guild of Acadiana Weavers and Spinners for years, but today has resumed focus on his craft.

Suzanne Chaillot

Suzanne Chaillot grew up around coton jaune her whole life. Her mother, a historian at Center of Louisiana Studies, spent years researching the tradition and gifted Chaillot a loom at age twelve; and her great grandmother was a weaver. Chaillot still has her blankets, and pulls out a stack to dig through, piling them in my arms. Her armoire is filled with still more blankets collected from all over the region, as well as specialty pieces she’s amassed from studying weaving in Southern Mexico.  

“This is the art our ancestors practiced out of necessity.” —Suzanne Chaillot

Chaillot, like her mother before her, recognizes the importance of connection, and how history can serve as the spindle we wrap all our disparate fibers around. She tells me that the Acadian textile is defined by its simple stripe, which is derived from the French influence. While Acadians wove with wool before The Great Upheaval, in Louisiana they adapted to cotton. Suzanne tells me the hand-spinning is an important part of the tradition, and that while brown cotton textiles can certainly be made, with far less trouble, using modern technology, it would then no longer be an act of preservation. “This is the art our ancestors practiced out of necessity.” Preservationists like Chaillot today are practicing to protect, even when the world doesn’t need it anymore. When she began, there were only three weavers maintaining this tradition (including Bourque and Thibodeaux), but that number has now grown to around ten.

Coton jaune has been cultivated as an art form, a trade, and a tradition for a people who have rebuilt themselves over and over again, adapting to new environments with limited resources. That small and smooth thing, that dark seed, can, and did, furnish families for whole generations. And today, in a world that has little time or need for products that require so many hours, such care, that seed is serving us in a new way entirely: it is helping us to remember.  

From the minutiae of the cotton fiber, we look outward at the rolling prairies and sinking lowlands of Southern Louisiana. Upon the familiar horizon of the present, we can still make out the visage of our shared past. The land has ceded to infiltrating waters. Urban sprawl has mired prairies. Progress is present, yes, but it comes at a cost. What is lost when traditions fade into oblivion? How do we unravel our identity in a land that has shifted so? The answer changes with every loci, but I think of Dufrene—who sets an example for embracing the changing face of tradition. He recently received a bolt of coton jaune fabric, and his mother-in-law will be sewing it into a blazer for him. This will be the first clothing made from coton jaune in over seventy-five years. 

Learn more about Acadiana Brown Cotton at acadianabrowncotton.com.