Negroland : a memoir / Margo Jefferson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jefferson, Margo, 1947- author.

Contributor:

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jefferson, Margo, 1947---Childhood and youth.

Jefferson family.

Jefferson, Margo, 1947-.

African American women--Illinois--Chicago--Biography.

African Americans--Race identity.

Elite (Social sciences)--Illinois--Chicago.

African Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs--20th century.

African Americans.

Manners and customs.

Elite (Social sciences).

African American women.

Chicago (Ill.)--Race relations--History--20th century--Anecdotes.

Illinois--Chicago.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Anecdotes.

Penn Provenance:

Banks, Joanna (donor) (label) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

8 unnumbered pages, 248 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Pantheon Books, 2015.

Summary:

"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.

Notes:

"Jacket design by Oliver Munday."

"Book design by M. Kristen Bearse."

Includes bibliographical references (pages [243]-248).

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Banks Collection copy: dustjacket retained.

Banks Collection copy has label "This book belongs to Joanna Banks (Please return)".

ISBN:

9780307378453

0307378454

OCLC:

898228286

Online:

Cover image