Negroland : a memoir Margo Jefferson

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jefferson, Margo, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Jefferson, Margo.

Jefferson family.

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

African American women.

African Americans--Race identity.

African Americans.

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

Elite (Social sciences).

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

Chicago (Ill.).

African American girls--Illinois--Chicago Region--Social conditions--20th century.

African American girls.

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

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

248 pages ; 23 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:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-248).

National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, 2015.

Local Notes:

Pennsylvania Abolition Society Complimentary Collection

ISBN:

9780307378453

0307378454

OCLC:

898228286

Publisher Number:

40025241937

99964041080