Negroland: A Memoir - Brossura

Margo Jefferson

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1783783397 ISBN 13: 9781783783397

Casa editrice: Granta Books, 2016

Riassunto

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 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.

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Recensione:

'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

'Innovative, unsettling and powerful... Margo Jefferson brilliantly enlivens the memoir form, disrupting its comforting beat in order to be heard' -- TLS

'A rare insight into upper-class black society in the US... Jefferson's eye for details yields some devastatingly honest and painful insights [and she delights] in the subtleties of language, in the choice of the mot juste... Jefferson is striking a path into dangerous, unfamiliar territory' -- The Times

'Unable to disentangle the political from the personal, Jefferson has combined social history with autobiography in this remarkable book. She opens a window on asection of American society that's little-known on this side of the Atlantic... A New York Times and Newsweek critic of many years' standing, she's written an examination of her life and times that's revelatory and keenly self-aware' -- Herald

'As Margo Jefferson illuminates in her captivating memoir, Negroland is not so much a geographic location as a state of mind; an exclusive without discernible borders, to which few have ever belonged... As its title suggests, this is a bold and defiant work that enumerates the credits and deficits of black life; Jefferson's reflections are leavened by a sharp wit and a literary rolling of the eyes when dissecting the nuances of prejudice... Self-pity forms no part of Jefferson's writing palette. Her memoir doesn't linger on grief: it's mostly breezy and conversational, and every so often she breaks off to address the reader conspiratorially, like the protagonist in a film speaking directly to the camera. It serves the book well, for much of Negroland has the experimental and experiential quality of jazz - albeit the formal variety found in the concert hall rather than the freestyle, down and dirty jamming of the backstreet club. Charm is this book's watchword' -- Guardian

'An exploration of a mesh of complex cultural identities, a tangle of class, race, gender and appearance... Nuanced emotion and unforgiving observation, combined with stylistic risk-taking, might not guarantee comfortable reading, but they make Negroland utterly compelling. Jefferson's is a reluctant memoir, but had she not written it, we would have been deprived of a remarkable achievement' -- Sunday Times

'Full of zingy sentences... Jefferson is as charming as she is enlightening; most readers of this fine book will hope for future volumes of recollection' -- Financial Times

'In Negroland, writes Margo Jefferson, 'we thought of ourselves as the Third Race, poised between the masses of Negroes and Caucasians.' This penetrating memoir... is at its heart an unpacking of that sentence and its implications... This book encapsulates the tension between wanting and fearing to be seen' -- Economist

'A personal memoir with profound political resonance, Negroland is an illuminating exploration of the racial politics of culture and class' --Irish Times

'The masterful Negroland - endlessly impressive and important - is a book of then versus now. Slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights, the Black Power movement: Jefferson elegantly traverses a rich, often troubling, but surprising historical landscape [...] There's no navel-gazing here. The personal is no longer indistinguishable from the political, but Jefferson achieves that volatile alchemy that's integral to all the finest of memoirs: the transformation of an individual story into something that resonates outside the confines of subjective experience' -- Independent

'In this compelling, moving and clear-eyed memoir, Jefferson draws on her own experiences and those of previous generations of privileged black Americans to explore complex issues of identity and privilege with insight, compassion and wry wit' -- Irish Times

'A fascinating account of the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic's upbringing among Chicago's black elite community. It's an intriguing look at the way race and class interplay in the United States... It's sharp, thoughtful stuff, unafraid and honest, making Negroland an important as well as an engrossing read' -- Big Issue

'The honesty of Negroland is matched only by its historical depth and intellectual integrity' -- Best Books of 2016, TLS

'A candid memoir about 'race' in America that zooms into sharp focus right now and makes you question everything, even the too easy term 'race in America'. The book rings and chimes and finds strength in contradiction' -- Best Books of 2016, Herald

'Jefferson combines her own memories with elements of the broader academic history of black communities in America, slavery and societal structures... It is an important and deeply interesting text on a little known slice of history' -- Skinny

'[A] meditation on race, sex, class and American culture, told through the prism of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's memoir of her rarefied upbringing and education as the daughter of a successful paediatrician' --Bookseller

'A beautifully nuanced account of growing up as a middle-class African-American in Chicago in the 1950s... Negroland is not only an engrossing dissection of a community rarely written about, [...] it also skilfully picks apart traditional notions of colour' -- Prospect Magazine

'A cunningly unexpected addition to the many recent books about race relation... [Jefferson] knows who she is, now, not who someone else wants her to be' -- Elle Thinks blog

'It's interesting and sympathetic how Jefferson acknowledges throughout her memoir the complexity of identity. It's also touching how unwilling she is to give into self pity and maintain a tough critical distance from the deep emotional hurt she experienced while still making the reader achingly aware of the power of her feelings... Jefferson means to provoke thought and discussion about the subject - something which is ongoing and necessary. It's a tremendous strength of this book that it doesn't lapse into didacticism, but instead prompted me to feel more awareness of how people might or might not change their behaviour based on racial differences.It made me think about how marginalized groups in our society don't all exist on one level but inhabit different spheres of repression and discrimination... This is a powerful and thought-provoking memoir' -- Lonesome Reader blog

'Negroland is a superb book. Non-fiction books that meld genres seem to be having a bit of a moment but what this one does differently is consider the intersections of race, class and gender in a way I haven't seen before. It's a fascinating read and an insight into an underexplored area of society. Highly recommended' --Writes of Women blog

L'autore:

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, MARGO JEFFERSON was for years a theatre and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York magazine, and The New Republic. She is the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Granta Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1783783397
• ISBN 13: 9781783783397
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 256