archytas's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
"Civil rights. The New Left. Black Power. Feminism. Gay rights. To be remade so many times in one generation is surely a blessing. So I won’t trap myself into quantifying which matters more, race, or gender, or class. Race, gender, and class are basic elements of one’s living. Basic as utensils and clothing; always in use; always needing repairs and updates. Basic as body and breath, justice and reason, passion and imagination. So the question isn’t “Which matters most?,” it’s “How does each matter?” Gender, race, class; class, race, gender—your three in one and one in three."
In this memoir of growing up in the Black 'aspirational' classes in the 1950s and 1960s, Jefferson explores the very personal and yet very political topic of what it feels like to be at the intersection.
"There are days when I still want to dismantle this constructed self of mine. You did it so badly, I think. You lost so much time. And then I tell myself, so what? So what? Go on."
Jefferson's book brims with anecdotes, searching through her own memory for analysis. She covers the pain and the exhaustion of navigating white friendships, or needing to perform whiteness - which is a kind of class sensibility here. She writes also of the disappointment of discovering sexism in her heroes, Baldwin's majestic scorn for silly lady novelists. But Jefferson never makes her experiences feel as if trapped between - her Negroland girls experiences are rich, whole, of themselves.
In this memoir of growing up in the Black 'aspirational' classes in the 1950s and 1960s, Jefferson explores the very personal and yet very political topic of what it feels like to be at the intersection.
"There are days when I still want to dismantle this constructed self of mine. You did it so badly, I think. You lost so much time. And then I tell myself, so what? So what? Go on."
Jefferson's book brims with anecdotes, searching through her own memory for analysis. She covers the pain and the exhaustion of navigating white friendships, or needing to perform whiteness - which is a kind of class sensibility here. She writes also of the disappointment of discovering sexism in her heroes, Baldwin's majestic scorn for silly lady novelists. But Jefferson never makes her experiences feel as if trapped between - her Negroland girls experiences are rich, whole, of themselves.
sde's review against another edition
2.0
FINALLY finished this book, which was part of my library's summer book club. It is a short book - under 250 pages - but I had so much trouble following it or getting into it. I kept reading because I felt it could be an important work and from a point of view I have not heard much, an upper crust African-American.
BUT - it was all over the place. As another reader pointed out, she switched from first person to calling herself Margo, to future and past tense. It read as sort of stream of consciousness. A bunch of vignettes that were not even really vignettes. It seemed more like a few essays strung together with a couple of contemporary style poems mixed in between.
I found her early life fascinating. It was elite, and her family mixed with all sorts of celebrities. She went to the acclaimed Chicago Lab School, where she was one of a handful of black students. Yet, of course, as a black female growing up in the 1950s, her world and actions were very restricted, even though she was more financially privileged than most white kids her age.
Her vacillating between self-hatred and black pride was also interesting. Readers gather that she went through some mental health crises, although we don't know what they are. In some ways, the book could be boiled down to a line at the end where she says "How do you adapt your singular, willful self to so much history and myth?"
I looked Jefferson up, and she received her BA from Brandeis. Although the book discusses her college years, I had no idea from this that she attended this heavily Jewish college. There just seems like there were so many things to write about if she had written a more traditional memoir.
Wish I had read this as part of a class because there was obviously a lot that I didn't get or appreciate. The author has an amazing biography, including being a writing professor at Columbia. She won the National Book Critics Award for this book. I am just too dense to get it and needed more guidance to appreciate it.
PS. Was curious about the rest of her family, so looked them up. Her sister was the long time director of The Alvin Ailey School, and her niece is a dancer and choreographer. The niece's works are performed often near me, so will look for them now! Also, they still are part of the celebrity world. According to the New York Times, Molly Ringwald attended the niece's wedding.
BUT - it was all over the place. As another reader pointed out, she switched from first person to calling herself Margo, to future and past tense. It read as sort of stream of consciousness. A bunch of vignettes that were not even really vignettes. It seemed more like a few essays strung together with a couple of contemporary style poems mixed in between.
I found her early life fascinating. It was elite, and her family mixed with all sorts of celebrities. She went to the acclaimed Chicago Lab School, where she was one of a handful of black students. Yet, of course, as a black female growing up in the 1950s, her world and actions were very restricted, even though she was more financially privileged than most white kids her age.
Her vacillating between self-hatred and black pride was also interesting. Readers gather that she went through some mental health crises, although we don't know what they are. In some ways, the book could be boiled down to a line at the end where she says "How do you adapt your singular, willful self to so much history and myth?"
I looked Jefferson up, and she received her BA from Brandeis. Although the book discusses her college years, I had no idea from this that she attended this heavily Jewish college. There just seems like there were so many things to write about if she had written a more traditional memoir.
Wish I had read this as part of a class because there was obviously a lot that I didn't get or appreciate. The author has an amazing biography, including being a writing professor at Columbia. She won the National Book Critics Award for this book. I am just too dense to get it and needed more guidance to appreciate it.
PS. Was curious about the rest of her family, so looked them up. Her sister was the long time director of The Alvin Ailey School, and her niece is a dancer and choreographer. The niece's works are performed often near me, so will look for them now! Also, they still are part of the celebrity world. According to the New York Times, Molly Ringwald attended the niece's wedding.
mmchampion's review against another edition
2.0
Ummm... despite learning a great deal about the history of classism (and possibly Colorism) within the African American community, I cannot determine if I should feel enlightened, gratitude for my own upbringing or anger. I’m in need of a book discussion. This read more as a commentary rather than a memoir. In the end, however, it is possible that I may have missed the entire point. Again, in need to a discussion/feedback group.
btcarolus's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
kelliebell's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide and Racism
rjeilani's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
owlette's review against another edition
3.0
I don't entirely disagree with the 1-star reviews saying that the writing is "disjointed" and does not hold up to its hype and promise of a memoir. This is not written in a conventional style of the genre. On top of that, all the 70's and 80's cultural references made it very challenging for me to follow. Around the 20 page mark I was feeling defeated.
To help me from DNF'ing I decided to read a couple of book reviews to get some guidance and encouragement. First, The New Yorker description of the book as "a series of unsparing vignettes" helped me reconcile with the writing style. Second, the following passage from a review by Tracy K. Smith published in The New York Times helped me focus on something to look out for while reading so that I might finish reading the book with some sense of coherence.
It's precarious to carve out your identity as an individual when your people's history is loaded even for the Talented Tenth in the Negroland. It reminded me of that moment in The People v. O. J. Simpson: An American Crime Story when Cochran stripped the decor of Simpson's property and redecorated with a framed picture of Simpson with his mother and various objects evoking African tribal handiwork before the jury's tour.
Just as Simpson's defense team was playing the race card regardless of the client's own preferences and tastes, Jefferson's "I" has had (and still has) a hard time keeping its distance from the collective "we" that she is taught to both represent and rise herself from. When her mother hear her and her sister reciting Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" by imitating the accents of Black actors on popular sitcoms, she tells them they are "butchering" the poem and demonstrates how to accent syllables and elide consonants in the way Hughes intended. The same mother disapproves of other body language and mannerism such as when the girls would laugh "bend[ing] over at the waist and shuffl[ing] [their] feet," something they briefly picked up from their neighborhood Black girl and unbecoming in Negroland.
Jefferson asks at the beginning of her last chapter: "How do you adapt your singular, willful self to so much history and myth? So much glory, banality, honor, and betrayal?" Later at the end of that chapter, she responds to her own question with this surrender:
To help me from DNF'ing I decided to read a couple of book reviews to get some guidance and encouragement. First, The New Yorker description of the book as "a series of unsparing vignettes" helped me reconcile with the writing style. Second, the following passage from a review by Tracy K. Smith published in The New York Times helped me focus on something to look out for while reading so that I might finish reading the book with some sense of coherence.
[N]o matter how conscious Jefferson makes us of societal circumstances, what drives “Negroland” is an abiding commitment to the primacy of the individual. ... Aren’t all of us, no matter who we are, living for the rare moments when we can forget about the collective we belong to and just be?
It's precarious to carve out your identity as an individual when your people's history is loaded even for the Talented Tenth in the Negroland. It reminded me of that moment in The People v. O. J. Simpson: An American Crime Story when Cochran stripped the decor of Simpson's property and redecorated with a framed picture of Simpson with his mother and various objects evoking African tribal handiwork before the jury's tour.
Just as Simpson's defense team was playing the race card regardless of the client's own preferences and tastes, Jefferson's "I" has had (and still has) a hard time keeping its distance from the collective "we" that she is taught to both represent and rise herself from. When her mother hear her and her sister reciting Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" by imitating the accents of Black actors on popular sitcoms, she tells them they are "butchering" the poem and demonstrates how to accent syllables and elide consonants in the way Hughes intended. The same mother disapproves of other body language and mannerism such as when the girls would laugh "bend[ing] over at the waist and shuffl[ing] [their] feet," something they briefly picked up from their neighborhood Black girl and unbecoming in Negroland.
Jefferson asks at the beginning of her last chapter: "How do you adapt your singular, willful self to so much history and myth? So much glory, banality, honor, and betrayal?" Later at the end of that chapter, she responds to her own question with this surrender:
There are days when I still want to dismantle this constructed self of mine. You did it so badly, I think. You lost so much time. And then I tell myself, so what?
So what?
Go on.