Negroland : A Memoir

Author: Jefferson, Margo

Biography & True Stories

Published on 29 December 2016 by GRANTA BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

'Jefferson's eye for details yields some devastatingly honest and painful insights' The Times'Captivating... Charm is this book's watchword' Colin Grant, Guardian The daughter of a successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite, Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among Chicago's black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege came expectation. Reckoning with the limits 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. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. 'Negroland is a sharp-eyed cultural commentary on an era of America that has often been too simply told' Aminatta Forna, Guardian 'Jefferson writes with piercing clarity of a childhood which was full of love and opportunity at home, but also saturated by contradictions, confusions and a racism which corrodes, like rust, to the heart's core' Observer 'Utterly compelling... a remarkable achievement' Sunday Times