French Boy

French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Memoir is a glimpse into a young life both at the margins and at the center of the 1950s American experience. Born in 1947, Denis Ledoux had a childhood that almost seems to have been lived in another country and another century, but it is typical of what many Franco-Americans born of his generation experienced.
 

French Boy explores much: the developmental stages of childhood; family dynamics, bilingualism, acculturation and assimilation, alienation and shame.

In French Boy, you will read about:

•    the conflict behind bilingualism,
•    persistent nostalgia for a past,
•    looking for mentors beyond one's reach,
•    how the unassimilable ethnics assimilated, and
•    the discomfort of "otherness."

What others have said of Denis Ledoux's writing:

"The stories of Denis Ledoux come from a quietly strange culture—that of the French in America—which gives them their own quiet strangeness. Clear and deep, these stories try to understand something just beyond understanding."
— David Plante / novelist, essayist / National Book Award nominee

"[Ledoux's] stories are fragile islands of the human heart where the unspoken epiphanies of joy and sorrow are given voice and presence. And Ledoux's own voice shimmers with a distinct Québecois-American sensibility that makes these stories heart-breaking and haunting."
— A. Poulin, Jr./  poet, editor / founder of BOA EDITIONS

[In Ledoux's stories,] "French-English language and culture conflict exist as an undercurrent...The problem for a writer will nearly always be uncovering the social subtleties arising from insistent domination...and that
Ledoux [does]."
— Elizabeth Hardwick / Novelist, Guggenheim Fellow / a founder of The New York Review of Books

"French Boy put me in awe of Denis Ledoux's talent, work ethic, good sense, and common humanity. These qualities add up to a touch of genius, which in summary displays Ledoux's ability to bring drama and feeling, as well as meaning, to the reportage of ordinary life."
— Ernest Hébert / Novelist / Whirlybird Island

"In French Boy, Denis Ledoux paints an intimate and informative portrait of his Franco-American boyhood in 1950s Maine, where he felt "separate from the present which seemed foreign—and American." Ledoux's abiding affinity for story enriches this tale of a thoughtful boy seeking more than his parents could provide."
— Steven Riel / Poet / Edgemere

"French Boy shines a spotlight on our complex Franco history and rich culture, and I found many points of connection throughout. You will, too."
— Susan Poulin / dramatist / Pardon My French!; Author / Finding Your Inner Moose; Blogger / Just Ask Ida

With vivid and painstaking detail, Denis Ledoux recreates Maine's Franco-American community in French Boy as it was when he was growing up in the 1950s. His memoir is so close to life as then lived that it evokes both pride and pain, regret and remembrance, in equal measure.
— Douglas Rooks / Biographer / First Franco: Albert Beliveau in Law, Politics and Love