Negroland : a memoir / Margo Jefferson.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Pantheon Books, [2015]Edition: First editionDescription: 248 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0307378454
- 9780307378453
- Jefferson, Margo, 1947- -- Childhood and youth
- Jefferson family
- African American women -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Biography
- African Americans -- Race identity
- African Americans -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
- Elite (Social sciences) -- Illinois -- Chicago
- Chicago (Ill.) -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century -- Anecdotes
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | Biography | Jefferso M. J45 | Available | 33111008044899 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2015
New York Times: Dwight Garner's Best Books of 2015
Washington Post: 10 Best Books of 2015
Los Angeles Times: 31 Best Nonfiction Books of 2015
Marie Claire: Best Books of 2015
Vanity Fair: Best Book Gifts of 2015
TIME Best Books of 2015
At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac--here is 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 with distancing itself from whites and the black generality while tirelessly measuring itself against both.
Born 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 postracial 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 photographs.)
Includes bibliographical references (pages [243]-248).
"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.