Celestial Blue Skies: Celestial Blue Skies is Shortlisted for the Earnest Gaines Award

http://www.nola.com/living/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2014/12/mitchell_s_jackson_wins_2014_e.html

Maggie Perrodin-Collins

I was born and raised under the clear blue skies of Loreauville, Louisiana. I majored in English at the University of Louisiana and later earned a Master’s degree from the University of New Orleans where I earned the title Educational Diagnostician. I have two boys and a wonderful husband. An excerpt of my novel was published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas. Celestial Blue Skies which was once titled The Curse of the Mulatto was a 2009 finalist finalist for the worldwide William Faulkner William Wisdom writing contest. It also placed as a finalist in the same 2011 competition as Celestial Blue Skies. I am a Center for Black Literature fellow.

Celestial Blue Skies Synopsis

Celestial Blue Skies is a coming of age story about young biracial Celeste who lives in poverty with her mentally ill mother, her grandmother, Maymay, her Aunt Bumblebee, her Uncle T-Red, her three sisters, and her cousins. Celeste learns how to fend for herself and her sisters at a young age while also fighting rumors about her mother, Tut, a sleepy one traffic- light Southwestern Louisiana town. Her mother Tut wants to leave all of them and live with a man she finds working in the sugarcane fields. Maymay fears that Celeste will end up like her mother. Will Celeste end up like her mother, or will she redeem her family from hoodoo and the Curse of the Mulatto? Will she find love herself with someone with a culture just as exotic as hers?