Negroland : a memoir / Margo Jefferson.

First edition.

9780307378453 (hardcover)
0307378454 (hardcover)
9781101870648 (electronic book)

New York : Pantheon Books, [2015]

English

248 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

F548.9.N4 J44 2015

305.896/0730773110904

"At once incendiary and icy, mischievous, and provocative, celebratory and elegiac, a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of the author's rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned to distance itself from whites and the black generality, while tirelessly measuring itself against both. Born in 1947 in upper-crust black Chicago--her father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nation's oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialite--Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among (call them what you will) the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, "a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty." Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments--the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of post-racial America--Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions. Aware as it is of heart-wrenching despair and depression, this book is a triumphant paean to the grace of perseverance. (With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-248).

National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, 2015.

On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources