Winner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardWinner of the Heartland PrizeA New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Time; Vanity Fair; Marie Claire; Time Out New York; Minneapolis Star Tribune; Kansas City Star; Men’s Journal; Oprah.com Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson was born in 1947 into upper-crust black Chicago. Her father was head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital; while her mother was a socialite. In these pages; Jefferson takes us into this insular and discerning society: “I call it Negroland;†she writes; “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders; glorious and terrible.†Negroland’s pedigree dates back generations; having originated with antebellum free blacks who made their fortunes among the plantations of the South. It evolved into a world of exclusive sororities; fraternities; networks; and clubs—a world in which skin color and hair texture were relentlessly evaluated alongside scholarly and professional achievements; where the Talented Tenth positioned themselves as a third race between whites and “the masses of Negros;†and where the motto was “Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment.†At once incendiary and icy; mischievous and provocative; celebratory and elegiac; Negroland is a landmark work on privilege; discrimination; and the fallacy of post-racial America.
#39204 in Books Stern; Gerald M. 2008-05-06 2008-05-06Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 7.98 x .63 x 5.18l; .51 #File Name: 0307388492304 pages
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