Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

NEGROLAND by Margo Jefferson is a glimpse into a world I did not know about, really. Pulitzer-prize winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson was born in 1947 into an upper class Black family in Chicago. There is a whole world of families like these, many of whom have originated with antebellum blacks from the North and South. It is a world of pedigree, with the motto, "Achievement, Invulnerability, Comportment." Margo and her sister went to private schools where they were among the few Black students, and despite her easy ability negotiating both worlds, she offers a glimpse into its own challenges of being different from the other Blacks, almost a class unto themselves. The expected behavior was sometimes constraining, and she was always cognizant of what to do-and not.

What a fallacy this book exposes about post-racial America, and in what a powerful and evocative way!

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