In a New Orleans where things, and people, are supposed to be black and white, Cille and her light-skinned brothers are neither. They are “the color that looks not-quite white next to a white man, and not-quite colored next to a colored man. It was a not-quite color in a place where you had to be something.” The daughter of a dreamy alcoholic father who introduces her to “Mr. Keats and Mr. Shelley” but who exits her life too soon and a mother who teaches her children not the love of God but the fear of him, young Cille struggles for balance and identity in a world where race and class define people for life and where her two brothers lose themselves beating against the bars of the cage of a divided culture.
Peter Feibleman is the author of numerous works, including fiction, nonfiction, and plays. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Golden Pen Award, he lives in New York and Martha’s Vineyard.
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