| Description |
248 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references. |
| 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. |
| Subject |
Jefferson, Margo, 1947- -- Childhood and youth.
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Jefferson family.
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African American women -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Biography.
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African Americans -- Race identity.
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Elite (Social sciences) -- Illinois -- Chicago.
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African American girls -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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African Americans -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
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Chicago (Ill.) -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century -- Anecdotes.
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| Genre |
Autobiographies.
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| ISBN |
9780307378453 (hardback) |
|
0307378454 (hardback) |
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