Cajun Women and Mardi Gras is the first book to explore the importance of women's contributions to the country Cajun Mardi Gras tradition, or Mardi Gras run. Most Mardi Gras runs--masked begging processions through the countryside, led by unmasked capitaines--have customarily excluded women. Male organizers explain that this rule protects not only the tradition s integrity but also women themselves from the event s rowdy, often drunken, play. Throughout the last century, and especially in the last fifty years, women in some prairie communities have insisted on taking more active and public...