Negroland

Starred review from October 12, 2015
Jefferson (On Michael Jackson), a former book and theater critic for the New York Times and Newsweek, writes about growing up in mid-20th-century Chicago as well as in "a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty" in this eloquent and enlightening memoir. Jefferson describes how her peers thought of themselves as "the Third Race, poised between the masses of Negroes and all classes of Caucasians." Jefferson's father was a pediatrician at Provident, the nation's oldest black hospital, and her mother was a social worker turned socialite. With her family's privilege came many perks: attendance at the private, progressive, mostly white University of Chicago Laboratory School; summer camps; drama performances; an impeccable wardrobe; and membership in national black civic organizations such as Jack and Jill of America and the Co-Ettes Club. Yet much was expected; for Jefferson's generation, she says, the motto was "Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment." In the late 1970s, though established in a successful journalism career, Jefferson contemplated suicide to escape the continued weight of these expectations. Black women, she writes, had been "denied the privilege of freely yielding to depression, of flaunting neurosis as a mark of social and psychic complexity." Perceptive, specific, and powerful, Jefferson's work balances themes of race, class, entitlement, and privilege with her own social and cultural awakening.

July 1, 2015
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning theater and book critic, a memoir about being raised in upper-class black Chicago, where families worked tirelessly to distance themselves as much from lower-class black people as from white people. Born in 1947, Jefferson (On Michael Jackson, 2006) has lived through an era that has seen radical shifts in the way black people are viewed and treated in the United States. The civil rights movement, shifting viewpoints on affirmative action, and the election of the first black president, with all the promise and peril it held: the author has borne witness to changes that her parents could only have dreamed about. Jefferson was born in a small part of Chicago where a "black elite" lived, to a father who was the head of pediatrics at Provident, the country's oldest black hospital, and a socialite mother. The author describes a segment of the population intent on simultaneously distinguishing itself from both white people and lower-class black people and drawing from both groups to forge its own identity. She writes about being raised in a mindset that demanded the best from her and her family, while she also experienced resentment regarding the relative lack of recognition for the achievements they had earned. Jefferson tells a story of her parents seeing Sammy Davis Jr. on stage, early in his career, when he hadn't yet established himself enough to completely let his own unique style shine through. Her parents could see the change coming, though-the self-assuredness in his performance-and they saw that as emblematic of their own rise. 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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Starred review from August 1, 2015
Born into an upper-class black family in Chicago, Jefferson came of age in the 1960s at a time when just beneath the surface of the civil rights movement, blacks were struggling with class frictions that complicated the ideals of racial unity. Her accomplished and aspiring parents and their friends sometimes thought of themselves as the Third Race, neither black nor white. Her father was a doctor, and her mother a proud stay-at-home mom. They were the strivers and achievers who longed to be judged by their merits, resentful of the racial identification they could not avoid. Jefferson recalls family members who passed, glorious social gatherings with elite entertainers whose fame didn't shield them from racial slights, and the comfort so many took in the embrace of people of their own race and class. Her parents fought the good fight to be treated with respect and equality and looked for any signs of backwardness they might need to root out of their daughters, who were alternately fascinated and repelled by the very cultural signifiers their parents feared. Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Jefferson draws on cultural touchstones, from Ebony to James Baldwin to Ntozake Shange, as she traces her life during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, when radical race consciousness and feminism questioned all of the old assumptions. This is a beautifully written memoir of growing up in the black elite with its distinctive challenges of race and class.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2015

In this emotional memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner Jefferson (writing, Columbia Univ.; On Michael Jackson) examines race, gender, and class through memories of growing up in a wealthy, elite family in Chicago. A member of Negroland, Jefferson's term for a small group of privileged African Americans, she explains the contradictory nature of her existence, relating tales of childhood and young adulthood that will be familiar to anyone who was once an adolescent girl trying to measure up. These reflections also reveal a painful duality that exists within Negroland, one that can lead to depression and, in some families, exile. Coming of age in the civil rights era, during the shift into second-wave feminism, Jefferson parallels her remembrances with current events of her lifetime; she was born in the 1960s. The author's heartfelt prose takes her audience on a journey through rejection and acceptance, exclusion and inclusion, self-doubt and perseverance in this page-turning, provocative narrative. Includes eight pages of black-and-white photographs. VERDICT Highly recommended for biography and memoir lovers, historians, and readers interested in psychology and social movements. [See Prepub Alert, 3/16/15.]--Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jefferson relates her upbringing among America's black elite. (LJ 9/15/15)

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2015

Former New York Times theater critic Jefferson defines Negroland as "a small region of Negro America where residents are sheltered by privilege and plenty," and in 1947 she was born into it. Her father was head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nation's oldest black hospital, and her mother was a socialite. Here she describes what it was like to grow up in Negroland and to proceed through the civil rights and feminist movements toward, putatively, postracial America.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.