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Sign up todayNegroland
A Memoir
Narrator
Robin Miles
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Length
7 hours 59 minutes
Language
English
Soon to be a television series by New York Times bestselling essayist Roxane Gay
At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac—here is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of Margo Jefferson’s 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 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—Margo 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.
The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson previously served as book and arts critic for Newsweek and the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica. Her memoir, Negroland, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has won several Audie and Earphones Awards. She holds a BA 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.
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Reviews
“Jefferson’s descriptions of how she ‘craved’ the right to despair are some of the most haunting parts of the book.”
“Powerful…Deftly explores the tensions that come with being part of America’s black elite.”
“Jefferson is a national treasure, and her memoir should be required reading across the country.”
“Part memoir, part confession, part cultural critique, and part something that might be called prayer, Negroland is razor sharp, self-lacerating, and singular.”
“Chronicles a lifetime as a member of Chicago’s black elite…How can a book so slim take on such mammoth considerations and manage them with such efficacy? Perhaps because we gain entry via one girl and, later, the woman she becomes.”
“Robin Miles narrates this insightful memoir…Miles’ narration grows more emotional when the memoir describes Jefferson’s youth in 1950s and ‘60s Chicago….Miles delivers a fascinating view of black class structure, attitudes on color, civil rights, feminism, privilege, and the fight for equality in white and black society.”
“Jefferson is simultaneously looking in and looking out at her blackness, elusive in her terse, evocative reconnaissance, leaving us yearning to know more.”
“Negroland is not about raw racism or caricatured villains. It is about subtleties and nuances, presumptions, and slights that chip away at one’s humanity and take a mental toll. It is the story of Jefferson’s evolution, too.”
“Jefferson’s beautiful, unsettling account…may be a story about the past, but her observations on racial tension and prejudice in America ring true today as well. This is not just a book about one woman’s history; it’s a biography of the United States and the everyday struggle for equality.”
“A candid observer, Jefferson articulates the complicated and calculated performance of upper-class black life.”
“A beautifully written memoir.”
“Highly recommended for biography and memoir lovers, historians, and readers interested in psychology and social movements.”
“Jefferson swings the narrative back and forth through her life, exploring the tides of racism, opportunity, and dignity while also provocatively exploring the inherent contradictions for Jefferson and her family members in working so tirelessly to differentiate themselves.”
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