Negroland

By Margo Jefferson

Subjects: Social conditions, History, Chicago (ill.), social life and customs, African American girls, African American women, African americans, illinois, chicago, African Americans, Biography, Childhood and youth, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, Elite (Social sciences), nyt:culture=2015-10-11, Chicago (ill.), history, Social life and customs, Anecdotes, Race relations, New York Times bestseller, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Race identity, Elite (social sciences), Chicago (ill.), social conditions, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural Heritage

Description: Born 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 postracial 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.