Staff of Lewiston’s French-language newspaper Le Messager, circa 1910. From “The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,” courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.

Even though �ֲ���ý professor Mary Rice-DeFosse and James Myall have studied Lewiston-Auburn’s Franco-American community for years, it can still surprise them.

While researching their new book, The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn (The History Press), the first comprehensive history of this community written for a general audience, they encountered a few shocks.

“There were lots of little details that were hidden even to people who had looked at that history for quite a long time,” says Myall, former coordinator of the University of Southern Maine’s Franco-American Collection and now executive director of the Freeport Historical Society.

One of the biggest bombshells (“I have trouble just picking one,” he says) came from early 20th-century local newspaper accounts of Franco-American children playing in the city dump in Little Canada (Lewiston’s Franco-American neighborhood) — a structural reminder of the discrimination and oppression new immigrant groups often face.

The authors were not the only ones to be surprised by the stories the book uncovered. “Although Franco-Americans are proud of their history, they don’t know how much they have to be proud of,” says Rice-DeFosse, a professor of French and Francophone studies.

• On April 27, 2015, Rice-DeFosse will be one of three faculty from Maine colleges and universities to receive the Maine Campus Compact’s Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence. “Her community-engaged work hits the faculty trifecta,” says �ֲ���ý Harward Center director Darby Ray, “as it involves substantial service to the off-campus community, innovative pedagogy and published scholarship.” In 2014, Rice-DeFosse was inducted into the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame.

Myall and Rice-DeFosse saw a need for the book within the Franco-American community, to share with its members the details of their rich history, but they also wrote the book for a wider audience, to cast doubt on popularly held beliefs about immigrant identity and assimilation in America.

Sylvia and Rosaire Roy at WCOU Studios on Lisbon Street, Lewiston, circa 1945. From “The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,” courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.

“We have a notion of the American melting pot: immigrants come, the first generation doesn’t speak any English, the second generation learns English and the third generation is assimilated,” Rice-DeFosse says. “And Maine’s Franco-Americans do not follow that pattern.”

Instead, Rice-Defosse and Myall reveal in their book an extraordinarily resilient community of Americans who have managed to preserve their French and French-Canadian roots since they started to arrive in the Twin Cities in the mid-19th century to work in the Androscoggin River mills.

The chapters, organized chronologically, are divided into short sections that cover material spanning arts (early 20th-century Lewiston was once dubbed the “Athens of French America”), festivals (like the 1925 snowshoe convention/”beer fest” held openly during Prohibition) and religion — the Church of SS Peter and Paul, an iconic building of the Lewiston-Auburn skyline, was built by 1936 on the “nickels and dimes” of faithful Franco-American parishioners. (It was reclassified as a basilica in 2005.)

A child at an unknown textile mill in Lewiston, circa 1900. From “The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,” courtesy of the University of Southern Maine, Franco-American Collection.

The book proceeds into the present, finishing with the reaction of the Franco-American community to the influx of African refugees (some of whom speak French) and the gubernatorial race between incumbent Paul LePage and U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud — two Franco-American candidates. “We really took it right up to the wire, considering we were writing about things that were happening the week before,” Myall says.

The co-authors, who had previously worked together on the board of the Franco-American Collection, enjoyed the collaboration. “We complemented each other nicely between a historical perspective — my primary interest — and Mary’s interest in the language and culture,” Myall says.

Myall and Rice-DeFosse brought to the book research that dovetailed to form a complete portrait of the Franco-American community.

Rice-DeFosse has worked with �ֲ���ý students, particularly those in her course titled “French in Maine,” for years to collect the oral histories of local Franco-American residents. While the interviews started as a way for her students to practice their French language in the community, they evolved into an indispensable source of history.

“I have a record of a number of people’s lives, their life stories…that was the reason we were able to do the book,” Rice-DeFosse says.

Myall brought his knowledge of the huge amounts of information housed in the Franco-American Collection. The collection, the University of Southern Maine’s store of Franco-American archival material (and one of the largest in the state of Maine), contains a plethora of primary sources — old newspapers, diaries, recipe books and thousands of images. Most are donations.

“We really appreciate [that] the information we were getting came mostly from the community in one form or another,” Myall says.

That is what makes The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn not only a compelling read for American history buffs, but a source of empowerment for the community itself.

“A lot of people say, ‘Thank you for recognizing our history and writing down these things that we all knew, but nobody has written down before,'” says Myall of reactions to the book. “But then there’s also another group of people — or the same group of people — who sometimes say, ‘This is great; I never even knew this about my own heritage.'”

The potential audience for this book extends well beyond the Lewiston-Auburn city limits. Myall encourages anyone from Maine and New England, a region rich in Franco-American influence, to read about this important population.

Rice-DeFosse sees connections in this history for the study of all people who live in border communities, “who in fact are fully American, in every sense, but who also have retained culture and sometimes language over generations.”

Mary Rice-DeFosse, professor of French and Francophone studies. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Community engagement makes �ֲ���ý distinctive — and the Department of French and Francophone Studies has, in turn, found distinctive ways to put that ethos into practice.

“We have a particular opportunity because �ֲ���ý is in a French-speaking community,” says Mary Rice-DeFosse, professor of French and Francophone studies.

Since arriving at �ֲ���ý 30 years ago, Rice-DeFosse has often aligned her curriculum with the interests of that community, one first defined by its French Canadian origins and now influenced by French-speakers from such African nations as Djibouti, Chad and Congo.

Rice-DeFosse’s achievements in community-engaged teaching have been, you might say, formidable. The Maine Legislature recently honored that track record by inducting her into the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame, where she joins such notables as the late Lewiston politician Georgette Berubé, sociologist Madeleine Giguère and Yvon Labbé, a champion of Maine’s Franco culture.

Rice-DeFosse was inducted in a March 19 ceremony at the State House. She was nominated for the Hall of Fame by state Rep. Margaret Rotundo, director of policy and strategic initiatives for �ֲ���ý’ Harward Center for Community Partnerships, and chosen by the state’s Franco-American legislators.

“I was very moved,” says Rice-DeFosse. “There are so many people in the community who are deserving of that kind of an award, and it’s unusual for people who are not of French heritage.” (Her husband, the late John DeFosse, was of French descent.)

One of Rice-DeFosse’s best-known community projects is a video documentary depicting women who wove an early and important social safety net in the Twin Cities. Les Soeurs Grises / The Grey Nuns: Elles sont venues, elles ont servi / They Came, They Served was completed in 2012, and is part of in Lewiston (now known as the Franco Center).

A branch of the Sisters of Charity of St. Hyacinthe, the Grey Nuns came to Lewiston in 1878 on the heels of French Canadian immigrants drawn by the thousands to work in Twin City mills. The nuns established the city’s first hospital (today’s St. Mary’s Regional Health Center) along with a nursing home, two orphanages and a school for nurses, all just blocks from �ֲ���ý.

The Grey Nuns draws heavily on interviews, several conducted by �ֲ���ý students, with former residents of the orphanages and other community members, as well as footage of members of the order provided by St. Mary’s. Rice-DeFosse researched, wrote, narrated and co-produced the film, created at the behest of the Franco Center and in collaboration with St. Mary’s Health System, the contemporary descendant of the nuns’ good works.

“I learned an enormous amount about what these women had done,” she says. “How incredibly innovative they were, in terms of delivering health care services, care for the elderly and care for children without parents and or whose parents were working.”

Rice-DeFosse’s department, in recent years and with funding from the Harward Center and the Maine Campus Compact, has restructured its curriculum to incorporate community-engaged learning at every course level.

“In the early levels, it’s just an introduction to the local community, and the fact that there are French speakers here,” she explains. More advanced students have done translations for community-related websites and museum exhibitions, and have conducted oral histories with local residents for an ongoing project related to Rice-DeFosse’s course “French in Maine.”

“I think that introduction to the notion that there are different communities within this community is important,” Rice-DeFosse says. “And we’ve found that students, having been introduced to community-engaged learning here, are able to take that experience abroad.” Students frequently design and conduct community research projects while studying abroad, often in Africa.

Community engagement has its impact on campus as well as in the community. “I like to develop in students the appreciation that there are many ways of thinking,” says Rice-DeFosse, “and the ability to think critically inside of the French language, because it immediately draws students outside of themselves.”

For students undertaking community-engaged learning in the context of French and francophone studies, the language “is no longer kind of a classroom game, about memorizing words and parroting,” as it might be at the high school level.

“Because we live in Lewiston-Auburn, there is something about the language and the cultural differences that make what we are teaching real,” says Rice-DeFosse. “So that connection is, I think, truly vital.”

Mary Rice-DeFosse, professor of French, lives and works in a state in which 40 percent of the residents claim French heritage. It’s no coincidence, then, that Franco-American Maine literature and culture are an important part of her work.

“My students have been doing oral histories in French with local residents for more than 10 years, especially in courses like ‘Oral French’ and ‘French in Maine,’ ” Rice-DeFosse says. Her students have also engaged in research and service-learning connected with Maine Francophones.

Rice-DeFosse enjoys her role as a mentor. This year she celebrated the achievement of Christine Quinan ’00, whose essay about French feminist Simone DeBeauvoir, written under Rice-DeFosse’s direction, garnered the 2000 Undergraduate Essay Award from the journal Women in French Studies. Published by Women in French — an organization affiliated with the Modern Language Association — the journal recently re-appointed Rice-DeFosse as a member of its expanded editorial board.