Wednesday's Child 


Reviewers' Comments 

   Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins' Wednesday's Child is beautiful stuff, a defiant and poignant memoir that transcends the personal.  It is an important book not only for its immediate content, for the experience of life within its covers, but because it gives us a glimpse of the almost unmined Golconda of literary source material in Franco-American lives.--E. Annie Proulx


    Wednesday's Child is a dark, dream-like meditation on fragility and survival, of the body from cancer and of the Franco-American community from its inheritance of paroissial piety, social marginality, and relentless poverty.  If your roots are in that community, there is much to recognize and confirm; if not, there is much to learn and remember.  --Clark Blaise


     Against the more familiar observations of the small-town lifer and the urban refugee, Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins' syncopations stood out, at once unique and connected to a vibrant and hardscrabble culture.  This is a sensuous recollection made urgent by a pending medical diagnosis, and the result is an energetic, poignant, and revelatory memoir. ...Wednesday's Child is astir in every sentence.--Sven Birkerts


    Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins bring a strong, fresh voice to Maine Literature--honest, bright, true.  She explores her rich, vital heritage with wisdom, humor, and unquenchable spirit.--Constance Hunting


Critiques, writings, quoted, excerpts etc.
see list below:

Based on the film Crash: The Migration and Settlement of Franco-Americans
in New England: "Survivance" of the Crash
By Lisa D. Helstrom
Colby College



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"Between Dream and Reality in Franco- America"
The French Review
May 2007, Volume 80, No. 6
This article explores the development of Francophone postcolonial cultures in the United States. It examines what it means to be French not simply in America but of America. There are some twenty million individuals of Francophone descent in North America today. People continue to live in French, linguistically and culturally, in the United States, yet Franco-Americans are virtually unknown. My study suggests that this phenomenon is related in part to the devaluation of French identity between Old World and New. Franco-American dreams and realities provide a different reading of America, its melting pot, m_tissage, race relations, and cultural identities. 
Jonathan Gosnell, Ph.D.
Jonathan Gosnell teaches language and contemporary culture in the Department of French Studies at Smith College.


"Teaching Franco-Americans of the Northeast"
The French Review
 May 2007, Volume 80, No. 6
This article argues that Franco-Americans should be incorporated into the Francophone curriculum and provides a select annotated bibliography of resources to facilitate that inclusion. [Listed in the bibliography of suggested texts.]
Susan Pinette, Ph.D.
University of Maine, Orono, ME


PRESENCE VISIBLE ET INVISIBLE DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE 
DANS LA LITTERATURE FRANCO-AMERICAINE CONTEMPORAINE
Peggy Pacini 
Université de la Sorbonne Paris IV
http://www.univ-rouen.fr/dyalang/glottopol/numero_9.html#sommaire


BORDER SPACES AND LA SURVIVANCE: THE EVOLUTION
OF THE FRANCO-AMERICAN NOVEL OF NEW ENGLAND (1875-2004)
By
CYNTHIA C. LEES
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
2006


Ethnic Voices in Maine Literature
By Judy Hakola
University of Maine
http://dll.umaine.edu/welcome/wom/ethnic_voices.htm


Breaking Even--Always with a personality
Wednesday Writer's Spotlight--Rhea Côté Robbins
by Nicole Ouellette
http://breakingeven.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/02/wednesday-writers-spotlight-rhea-c%C3%B4trobbins.html


Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity (Paperback)
by Mary Chuang, Rueyling Fong
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Page 303
"Communicating Franco-American Ethnicity"
Kristin Langellier


Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious (Banner Book)  by Emily Toth
1.  from Back Matter:
"... for establishments called Peyton Place. One advertises "hot horny pussies." Most important on the Net are the sites developed by Rhea Cote Robbins, ..."
2.  from Back Matter:
"... com/entertainment/tv/peyton place.shtml Robbins, Rhea Cote. "Franco American Women Writers and Editors." . "Grace Metalious Links. ..."
3.  from Front Matter:
"... a superb introduction, showing the novel's grittiness and astonishing power as a story about love, death, honesty, and much more. Rhea Cote Robbins, ..."


The City Cultures Reader�By Malcolm Miles, Iain Borden, Tim Hall, Routledge Urban Readers Series, 2003
Lucy Lippard in 'Home in the Weeds', an extract from her book The Lure of the Local, p. 270


Culture and Communication�By Edith Slembek
Frankfurt : Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation
pages 192-3
Enthält Beitr., die auf dem 12. Internationalen Colloquium zur Mündlichen Kommunikation im Sommer 1990 an der Universität Lausanne/Schweiz gehalten wurden.


Turning Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief
 By Dr Yvonna S Lincoln, Norman K. Denzin
Personal Narrative, Performance, Performativity: Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (Kristin M. Langellier)
Page 450 
For example, Rhea, a breast cancer survivor who had a mastectomy and then had her mastectomy scar tattooed with a design of Victorian flowers, ...
 Page 467 
Robbins, Rhea Cote, Petrie, Lanette Landry, Langellier, Kristin M., and Slott, Kathryn, eds. / am Franco-American and Proud ...


Ethnicity and Family Therapy, Third Edition  by Monica McGoldrick, Joe Giordano, and Nydia Garcia-Preto (Hardcover - Aug 18, 2005)
1.   on Page 553:
"... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Claudette Apicella, Rhea Côté-Robbins, Gilbert Domingue, John P. DuLong, and Françoise Paradis. We are also grateful to the many patients who, over the last ..."


The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home  by Brooke Dojny, Harvard Common Press
Excerpt - page 52: "... " -Rhea Cote Robbins, Wednesday's Child (Excerpted from A Maine Writers' Cookbook, Maine Writers ..."


Canadians in America (In America)  by Janice Hamilton, Lerner Publications
Excerpt - page 29: "... the routine of turning a farmer into a city slicker. -Rhea Côté Robbins, a Canadian American author describing her French Canadian ancestors in ..."



Governor's Mansion, Blaine House, Kiosk
On display January 14th to March 8th, 2002
as part of the Maine Products and Maine Arts Commission's
Arts in the Capitol Exhibits
See photos of event


*Quebec and Franco-America: a special issue in memory of Robert G. LeBlanc. 
Guest editors Jane Moss and Debra Straussfogel
Québec Studies
 Volume 33 - Spring/Summer 2002
Éloïse A. Brière
 Langue d'écriture et transculture: le cas des francophones des Amériques
et
Rhea Côté Robbins
 Wednesday's Child: Excerpts


*The River Review/La Revue rivière
A Multidisciplinary Journal of Arts and Ideas
Revue multidiscipline d'arts et d'idees
Poems by Rhea Côté Robbins 


Review in Maine-ly Women Wordsmiths, reprinted on Wolf Moon Press
by Laurie Meunier Graves.

*CBC, Zone Libre Interview with author 
(online video/audio), aired in September, "Les Franco-Américains du Maine"


*Portland Magazine
April, 1990
'Down the Plains' Three generations of Franco-American Women 
by Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins 


*Critiqued in River Review/Revue Rivière, (ordering info) Number/numéro 5, 1999 by Mary Rice-DeFosse, "Resistance  and Resilience in Wednesday's Child:  The Franco-American Memories of a Maine Woman."


*Les Enfants du Mercredi
par Justin Collins


*Weaving the fabric spun in the home
by Judy Harrison Of the NEWS Staff
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE)


" Maine Authors Index, Maine State Library  


*also, see "LE MILIEU, L'APPARTENANCE ET L'INTÉGRATION À LA SOCIÉTÉ AMÉRICAINE:  La littérature comme outil de connaissance des Franco-Américains," par Eric Joly

Essays and Poems
by Rhea Cote Robbins


How to order your copy!
Ask for it at your local bookstore
or order by U.S. mail/or email:
Rheta Press
641 South Main Street
Brewer, Maine  04412-2516
$12.99 plus $3 shipping and handling
Maine Residents please pay 5% state tax

 
 

©Copyright Rhea Cote Robbins

For comments or help, write the author 


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