Negroland: A Memoir
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Soon to be a television series by New York Times bestselling essayist Roxane Gay
At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiacâhere is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of Margo Jeffersonâs rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with distancing itself from whites and the black generality while tirelessly measuring itself against both.
Born in upper-crust black Chicagoâher father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nationâs oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialiteâMargo 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, âa small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.â
Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical momentsâthe civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of postracial AmericaâMargo Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions. Aware as it is of heartwrenching despair and depression, this book is a triumphant paean to the grace of perseverance.
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Margo Jefferson was for years a theater and book critic for Newsweek and the New York Times, where she won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, New York, and the New Republic, among other publications. She is the author of On Michael Jackson and is professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has twice won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, an Audie Award for directing, and many Earphones Awards. Her film and television acting credits include The Last Days of Disco, Primary Colors, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order, New York Undercover, National Geographicâs Tales from the Wild, All My Children, and One Life to Live. She regularly gives seminars to members of SAG and AFTRA actorsâ unions, and in 2005 she started Narration Arts Workshop in New York City, offering audiobook recording classes and coaching. She holds a BA degree in theater studies from Yale University, an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate from the British American Drama Academy in England.
