Soul Kiss - Softcover

Youngblood, Shay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1481847953 ISBN 13: 9781481847957

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

Soul Kiss is a coming of age novel about an African American girl, Mariah Kin Santos, who explores issues of identity, the fluid nature of sexuality, community as family and the boundaries of familial love. Until she was seven, Mariah Santos lived with her mother, and she might as well have been in heaven. Mama was love and warmth, kisses and games, long evenings of hot-plate food and blues on the radio. And Mama told Mariah stories of her father – his eyes were so black they nearly hypnotized her, she said. Now he was in Mexico, she said, painting the sky blue. But one day, out of that same blue sky, Mama decided to bring Mariah down to Georgia on the bus, to visit Aunt Faith and Aunt Merleen, who seemed so fierce and forbidding, so unlike Mama. And then Mama walked away, leaving behind a suitcase, a good-bye letter, and a little girl who would learn, through the unveiling of secrets and the slow journey to self-acceptance, to look elsewhere for the love she had lost. This stunning debut novel by Shay Youngblood is, ultimately, a love story – an unusual and unforgettable tale of the love that flows from within, that sustains us in times of trouble...that suffuses us, body and soul.

About this title

About the Author:

Shay Youngblood is author of the novels Black Girl in Paris, Winter Prophet, Black Power Barbie and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. Her plays include, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery, Talking Bones, Flying Blind, and Communism Killed My Dog. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Pushcart Prize for fiction, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, several NAACP Theater Awards and a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts, Sustained Achievement Award. Her short stories have been performed at Symphony Space and recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts. Ms. Youngblood received her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University. She has taught creative writing to faculty and graduate students at NYU, worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in the eastern Caribbean, as an au pair, artist's model, and poet's helper in Paris, and as a creative writing instructor in a Rhode Island women's prison. She was a National Endowment for the Arts sponsored, Japan U.S. Friendship Commission, Creative Artist Fellow (2011-2012) and Dallas Museum of Art, Writer in Residence (2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1481847953
• ISBN 13: 9781481847957
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 234