3 resources

• Genoria Pelchat, interviewed by Margaret Lanoue
  
  1625 Genoria Pelchat, interviewed by Margaret Lanoue, October 22, 1982, Lewiston, Maine. Pelchat talks about her childhood in early twentieth-century St. Joseph de Beauce, Canada; immigrating to Auburn, Maine in 1919; working at shoe shops 1920 to 1940; learning to speak English; food lines and shopping during the Depression; 1937 shoe shop strike; and working for elections. In the enclosed memoir, Pelchat wrote of early life at a Sisters of Charity orphanage; years of abuse by her father and stepmother; various jobs as a young woman; immigrating to Auburn; and forms of recreation. Text: catalog, 23 pp. memoir. Recording: T 1730 1 hour.
• Juliette Filteau, interviewed by Margaret Lanoue
  
  1623 Juliette Filteau, interviewed by Margaret Lanoue, October 8, 1982, in Lewiston, Maine. Filteau discusses growing up near Quebec in the 1910s; moving from Canada to Lewiston circa 1921; childhood experiences with nuns; living and working during the Great Depression; Franco-American food; operating a restaurant which sold alcohol; the advent of WWII; and her thoughts on cultural identity in Lewiston. Exhibit poster included. Text: 40pp catalog plus poster. Recording: T 1728 2 hours.
• “Our Life, Our Work” Lewiston Western Older Citizens Council/Marcella Sorg and Stefan Duplessis - Finding Aid
  
  This project involved a series of bilingual interviews utilizing family albums to stimulate discussion about Franco-American culture, particularly as it pertained to work. That is, it concerned the following: how work reflected cultural values; work ethic; work/occupation patterns; how work was integrated with family life (or interfered with it); the history of work patterns in the Lewiston area, and about Franco-American culture and family life in general. We interviewed elderly persons identified by the Western Maine Older Citizens Council. The interviewers included Raymond Pelletier (professor of French at UM), Marcella Sorg, Mark Silber, and Steffan Duplessis. The products of these interviews included: (1) a filmstrip with bilingual audio tape using reproduced family photos which illustrated themes from the ethnography and excerpts from the tape-recorded interviews; and (2) a bilingual traveling photo exhibit using selected family photos and captioned with quotes (with translations).