Negroland: A Memoir

<b>Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award<br><br>A <i>New York Times</i> Notable Book<br> <br> One of the Best Books of the Year: <i>The Washington Post</i>, <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>Time</i>, <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Marie Claire</i>, <i>Time Out New York</i>, <i>Minneapolis Star Tribune</i>, <i>Kansas City Star</i>, <i>Men's Journal</i>, <i>Oprah</i>.com </b><br><br>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: &quot;I call it Negroland,&quot; she writes, &quot;because I still find 'Negro' a word of wonders, glorious and terrible.&quot; <br><br> 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 &quot;the masses of Negros,&quot; and where the motto was &quot;Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment.&quot; At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac, <i>Negroland</i> is a landmark work on privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America.