While Ann Rice can be credited for starting our modern fascination with vampires* (The Vampire Chronicles), her second novel, The Feast of All Saints, is a study in the 1840’s New Orleans world of the gens de couleur libres, or free people of color. As I have noted in earlier posts, the system of plaçage played a huge role in the lives of these people, a life I believe my ancestors knew well.
Rice’s website describes her book as “a painfully historically rich and accurate novel that delicately and clearly draws patterns of irony and injustice together through complex family relationships and social structures.” In 2001, it was made into a mini-series with an all-star cast which Rice claims is the most faithful adaptation of her work. See the trailer below:
Watching this movie added another layer to my understanding of the privileges and deprivations imposed on those then called “colored.” Amazingly, the mini-series has been divided into twenty-one segments and posted on YouTube, but for a less chopped-up version, we rented from Netflix. Either way, it’s a fascinating scrutiny of this long-ago way of life.
*These days we are inundated with vampires. Hollywood has even turned Abraham Lincoln into a “vampire slayer”! (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) Is there no end?
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