First published 2015
Margo Jefferson examines her upbringing within Chicago's black aristocracy, a world she calls Negroland. Her father headed pediatrics at Provident, the nation's oldest black hospital. Her mother moved in socialite circles. Jefferson belonged to what others called the colored elite or blue-vein society, a group that maintained distance from both white society and the broader black community while constantly measuring itself against both. She traces how this rarefied environment shaped her during pivotal moments in American history: the civil rights era, early feminism, and the myth of postracial progress. Jefferson reveals the psychological tensions and moral contradictions that defined life in this insular world. The book confronts periods of deep depression and despair while celebrating the strength required to endure such contradictions. Jefferson maps the complex demands and restrictions of growing up privileged yet marginalized, exploring how class, race, and gender intersected in her formation as both person and critic.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, african-american, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, family-secrets, marginalization
Setting: Chicago, Provident
Period: Civil Rights Era, Early Feminism
248 pages · Hardcover · Pantheon
Content warnings: racism, sexism