Being French in America: The Small Surprises No Guidebook Warns You About

Moving from France to the United States does not usually produce the dramatic culture shock promised by expatriate memoirs. The two countries know each other too well for that. France and America have spent nearly 250 years as allies, admirers, competitors and occasional irritants, borrowing one another’s ideas while remaining quietly convinced that certain things are simply done better at home.

The real surprises arrive differently. At the supermarket. Over dinner. In an office. On a road through a town you had never heard of. Or the first time an American asks, with great enthusiasm, “How are you?”

To French ears, a question generally deserves an answer. In much of everyday American life, however, “How are you?” can function less as a request for information than as a ritual of friendliness. “Good, thanks. How are you?” completes the exchange perfectly. A French newcomer who responds with a considered account of the morning may eventually notice that the cashier was not quite prepared for chapter two.

It is one of the first lessons of living between the two cultures: identical words can perform different social functions. American warmth can be immediate, enthusiastic and verbal; French cordiality may take longer to establish and operate through a different set of codes. Neither is necessarily more sincere. The choreography has simply changed. Time has its own accent, too. Dinner invitations may begin surprisingly early. Professional punctuality is taken seriously. Calendars can fill weeks ahead, and spontaneity sometimes appears to require an appointment.

Restaurant service tends to be more visibly attentive, with servers checking on the table and presenting the bill in ways that can initially feel hurried to someone accustomed to lingering over a French meal. And then comes the calculation every newly arrived French person eventually confronts: the tip.

In the United States, tipping is more than a gesture layered onto the price of dinner. In much of the hospitality industry, it is embedded in the economic structure of service work. What may initially look to a European visitor like an optional social custom therefore carries a significance that is easy to underestimate.

Then there is the American supermarket, which can be simultaneously magnificent and bewildering. An entire aisle may be devoted to breakfast cereal, yet the precise yogurt, flour, butter or cut of meat required for a familiar French recipe can prove strangely elusive.

Bread becomes a reconnaissance mission. Cheese becomes geography. Wine purchasing changes according to state, and sometimes local, rules. Portion sizes occasionally appear to have been designed for a family reunion rather than dinner for two. But this is also where expatriation becomes interesting.

Eventually, substitution gives way to discovery. The French shopper looking unsuccessfully for an exact replica of something from home begins noticing what America does extraordinarily well: farmers’ markets, regional produce, increasingly accomplished artisan bakeries, American farmstead cheeses, immigrant food cultures and culinary traditions that have almost nothing in common with one another.

“American food” begins to seem like an increasingly useless expression. Louisiana, New England, New Mexico, the Lowcountry, Texas, California and the Upper Midwest do not eat the same America. And neither do they look the same.

That realization is one of the pleasures of living here long enough. The country becomes more regional, not less, the closer one looks.

The America experienced in Washington is not New Orleans. Newport is not Las Vegas. Charleston is not Los Angeles. A New England village in October seems to belong to another visual vocabulary altogether.

Even familiar rituals, conversation, dress, food and hospitality, shift subtly as one crosses the country. For someone arriving from France, where regional identity remains deeply connected to cuisine, landscape and tradition, this may be one of the most unexpectedly recognizable aspects of American life.

You begin to understand that there is no single American experience to decode. And then comes another surprise: France is already here.

Finding a little piece of France can be comforting, but it can also become an invitation to discover the larger Franco-American story.

French-speaking life in the United States is far older and richer than the contemporary expatriate community. French-language newspapers, communities, schools, churches, restaurants and cultural institutions have appeared across the country for generations.

The Library of Congress preserves an extensive collection of French-American periodicals documenting communities in Louisiana, New York, New England and elsewhere. French-language serials were being printed in America as early as 1780, when the Gazette française was produced aboard the French fleet at Newport for troops commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau.

The newspaper was short-lived, but its existence is a wonderful reminder that French-language media in America began almost alongside the country itself. Louisiana tells an even larger story.

When the territory entered the United States following the Louisiana Purchase, it brought a substantial French-speaking population into the young republic. French remained embedded in Louisiana’s political, journalistic and cultural life for generations. Newspapers appeared in French or bilingually across the state, while literary organizations worked explicitly to preserve French language and literature.

French in America was never merely the language of diplomats or recent immigrants. In Louisiana, it became part of an American regional culture with its own literature, journalism, music and identity.

Nor is that culture simply historical. French and Creole continue to live through Cajun music, zydeco, oral traditions, families, cultural organizations and contemporary artists. America did not merely receive French culture; in places such as Louisiana, it transformed it into something distinctly American.

Newport offers a different Franco-American encounter. Long before its mansions became associated with the extravagant architecture of the Gilded Age, the Rhode Island city had already occupied a consequential place in the French-American alliance. Rochambeau and thousands of French troops arrived there in 1780. The following year, the French army marched from Newport to join George Washington’s forces in the campaign that culminated at Yorktown.

A surviving French military map records the encampments, fortifications and French fleet around Newport Harbor. The elegant resort now associated with mansions, gardens and sailing therefore contains another history beneath the surface: French soldiers once occupied this landscape while helping determine the outcome of the American Revolution. That history changes the experience of being French in America.

Suddenly, the connection between the countries is not confined to embassies, commemorations or famous names. It appears in unexpected places: in Louisiana music, a New England harbor, an old newspaper, architecture, food, language; and sometimes in a neighborhood bakery.

Of course, there is pleasure in finding an excellent baguette, a familiar cheese or a table where the conversation can continue in French.

But expatriation becomes richer when those comforts serve as bridges rather than refuges. The most satisfying stage arrives when comparison gradually gives way to curiosity. You stop asking why Americans eat so early and begin wondering why American social life developed differently. You stop interpreting friendliness exclusively according to French codes and learn to recognize another vocabulary of hospitality. You discover that convenience, mobility and reinvention are not merely American habits but clues to the country’s history.

And you begin to understand why an American may feel deeply attached not only to the nation, but to Louisiana, New England, Texas, Appalachia, California or a hometown whose customs outsiders barely notice.

Living abroad does not require deciding which country has the better habits. Something more interesting happens instead: you acquire a second set of instincts without entirely surrendering the first. After enough years in America, France begins to look different when you return. America looks different because you have learned to see beyond its most obvious surface. And the Atlantic, strangely enough, begins to feel both wider and narrower than it did before. Perhaps that is the real pleasure of being French in America. You do not simply discover another country. You rediscover your own.

Sources:

• Library of Congress — French American Periodicals at the Library of Congress 

• Library of Congress — French American periodicals by U.S. state, including Louisiana and Newport 

• Library of Congress, American Folklife Center — Musique(s): A Contemporary Anthology of Louisiana Music in French and Creole 

• Library of Congress, American Folklife Center — Louisiana folklore and music collections 

• Library of Congress — French military map of Newport and Rochambeau’s encampment, 1780–81 

• U.S. Department of Labor — Federal rules concerning tipped employees