The Power of a Swamp Song

“Swamp Songs” has opened me up, opened me to a place I didn’t know existed. Well, I knew of Louisiana geographically and for its Mardi Gras and Hurricane Katrina, but after reading Sheryl’s memoir, it’s all become a different story. A story that transported me to a small corner of the world that breathes in hot sauce and thick heavy air, that swallows moments full of charades and dark phantom trees, all comforted and soothed by the Creole odors pumping from a kitchen in Kenner. I haven’t read much memoir in my past, but have to say that I greatly enjoyed the book being parted up into shorter essays that all interconnected and were all thread together via Louisiana landscape, culture, food, music and of course, the St. Germain family. These individual sections offered a powerful focus on specific individuals, relationships, Louisianan aspects and situations, creating the mixture that spices up life, a gumbo roux-ing with crayfish, oysters, tomatoes and peppers.

What astonished me more in this account of Sheryl’s life is the brutal honesty. I don’t believe I have ever felt so included and so let in to a piece in my life. It was as though the narrator and I had been best friends for years, and we were sitting together recounting it all, hearts spewed open, souls drowning the room with sincerity. I wonder if I feel more invested because I know her and she is my professor, but I think it would have had the same effect on me regardless. A place so far from my home, and from my background and culture, became a place I cared for, a beating swamp that felt full of stories and pain, memories and regret, but simultaneously thrived off passion and energy. I related to the pain, the loss and the darkness, like all humans that know what it feels like to be alive, to know the frustration and suffocation that comes with the bad.

The images of witch-like cypress trees grounding the swamps, salty wet fish meat that clung to hands, mystical multi-colored creatures that flocked the streets during Mardi Gras, masks shielding the truth that hid just behind them, are solidified in the back of my mind. Curved bodies and wine, cocaine and books, catfish and perfume are still stewing. Through Sheryl’s accounts of the natural world, how its being destroyed and also fed, her countless mentioning of cuisine and the rock it played in her family’s own culture, I grasped an understanding of a foreign place, a place that pushed the limits of her own security, acceptance and fear.

I particularly enjoyed the way Sheryl incorporated so many facts about the natural world of Louisiana, its fish and waters, weather and trees. I found the informational sections well placed throughout her personal story and realized how needed they were in revealing the people that came from this place. My goal as a writer is to capture a place in a way that puts the reader inside your body, walks them through the place, and brings them out on the other side, feeling the same way that I did. Sheryl has guaranteed for me that this is possible. Waiting.



Much more to say about “The Making of an Unruly Woman”….