Stunning for her daring originality, the author of Negroland, Margo Jefferson, gives us what she calls a temperamental autobiography comprised of visceral, intimate fragments that fuse criticism and memoir.
In this intimate and innovative memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Margo Jefferson gives us her own personal and intellectual formation.
As she comes of age in an America whose freedoms are distorted by race and gender, she finds herself reflected in a cast of othersùjazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes and stars. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the authorÆs alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parentÆs voice. W.E.B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles and movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a Black female body can be.
From Josephine BakerÆs radiant transformations, to Willa CatherÆs aesthetics of whiteness, Jefferson shows us how we can find space in cultures that will not make room for us, and howùeven in times of strictureùwe might learn to construct ourselves.