Jeanne Pitre Soileau

Jeanne Pitre Soileau is author of Yo’ Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children’s Folklore and Play, which received the 2018 Chicago Folklore Prize and the 2018 Opie Prize. She spent fifty years accumulating recordings of children as they answered a short list of questions related to their verbal play. Her study of schoolyard conversations is a treasure trove of children’s networking, speech play, group policing, and imaginative sparring.