Most Popular Books by Margo Jefferson

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism" (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as the title suggests" (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom). A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Vulture, Buzzfeed, Publishers Weekly The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson has lived in the thrall of a cast of others—her parents and maternal grandmother, jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes, and stars. These are the figures who thrill and trouble her, and who have made up her sense of self as a person and as a writer. In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise and occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics. In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters her self into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author’s alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parent’s voice. W. E. B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles and movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a black female body can be. The result is a wildly innovative work of depth and stirring beauty. It is defined by fractures and dissonance, longing and ecstasy, and a persistent searching. Jefferson interrogates her own self as well as the act of writing memoir, and probes the fissures at the center of American cultural life.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary look at privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America by the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic Jefferson takes us into an insular and discerning society: “I call it Negroland,” she writes, “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders, glorious and terrible.” 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. 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.” Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions, while reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments—the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the falsehood of post-racial America.

The renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic brilliantly unravels the complexities of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time in this passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysis. Who is Michael Jackson and what does it mean to call him a “What Is It”? What do P. T. Barnum, Peter Pan, and Edgar Allan Poe have to do with our fascination with Jackson? How did his curious Victorian upbringing and his tenure as a child prodigy on the “chitlin’ circuit” inform his character and multiplicity of selves? How is Michael Jackson’s celebrity related to the outrageous popularity of nineteenth-century minstrelsy? What is the perverse appeal of child stars for grown-ups and what is the price of such stardom for these children and for us? What uncanniness provoked Michael Jackson to become “Alone of All His Race, Alone of All Her Sex,” while establishing himself as an undeniably great performer with neo-Gothic, dandy proclivities and a producer of visionary music videos? What do we find so unnerving about Michael Jackson’s presumed monstrosity? In short, how are we all of us implicated? In this stunning book, Margo Jefferson gives us the incontrovertible lowdown on call-him-what-you-wish; she offers a powerful reckoning with a quintessential, richly allusive signifier of American society and popular culture.

Discusses various aspects of birth, childhood, economics, marriage, family relationships, politics, society, religion, and art common to many native African people.

"This volume of Virginia Woolf''s diary has a slower pace: she is finishing The Waves and wrestling with the shape of her next novel (The Years). These years are marred by the death of many of the people in her circle, including her close friend Lytton Strachey. Woolf also reflects on the political situation in Britain, and the menacing rise of fascism abroad. The diary testifies to the sense of external threat, as well as the tension between her social and her writing life, but as she and Leonard embark on a series of foreign trips she also revels in the discovery of new places and the profound contentment of her marriage."--

Michael Jackson, The King of Pop: icoon, provocateur, mysterie. Wie was hij echt? En hoe zijn zijn spectaculaire opkomst en catastrofale ondergang bepaald door hen die hem hebben gevormd, die hem hebben beschadigd en die hem liefhadden? Margo Jefferson schreef een scherpzinnige analyse van deze gebroken man, die werd veroordeeld om zijn huid en uiterlijk, zijn ondoorgrondelijke gedrag, zijn dubieuze relatie met kinderen. Een tragisch verhaal dat we alleen kunnen aanvaarden, als we erkennen wat het in ons oproept – wanhoop, verdriet, woede, compassie – en proberen het in wijsheid te vertalen. Naar aanleiding van het misbruik dat aan het licht kwam in de documentaire Leaving Neverland schreef Margo Jefferson een nieuwe inleiding.

Wat kan een Zwart vrouwelijk lichaam allemaal zijn? In Het bouwen van een zenuwstelsel versplintert Jefferson zichzelf eerst en bouwt zichzelf vervolgens weer op door haar gelauwerde kritieken te vervlechten met de woorden van overleden familieleden, sleutelmomenten uit haar leven, en met gedramatiseerde berichten van mensen die haar in haar eenzaamheid vergezelden. Jazzklanken vormen de intieme en leerzame stem van een ouder. Bing Crosby en Ike Turner zijn twee van haar alter ego''s. Zo ontstaat een remix van haarzelf in een nieuwe, met leven overgoten, muzikale vorm. Met diepgang en ontroerende schoonheid herontdekt Jefferson identiteit en de vorm van de memoir.

Pointierte Analyse zum Pop-Phänomen Michael Jackson, der im Juni 2009 starb.

Margo Jefferson è sempre stata affascinata da molti personaggi, vicini e lontani – i suoi genitori, la nonna materna, e poi luminari del jazz, scrittori, artisti, atleti, celebrità. Sono queste figure a emozionarla e tormentarla: le persone che hanno contribuito a formarla come individuo e come autrice. Nell’atteso seguito di «Negroland», Jefferson dona loro una nuova vita, in modo originale e struggente. Le ricrea sulla pagina, fondendo critica e ricordi personali, riunendo tutti coloro che hanno popolato il suo passato e le hanno fatto compagnia nella solitudine. Bing Crosby e Ike Turner diventano suoi alter ego. La musica di un disco jazz si leva emulando la voce intima di un genitore. W.E.B. Du Bois si incontra di nascosto con George Eliot, i muscoli di una ballerina classica si uniscono a quelli di un’atleta olimpica, svelandoci le potenzialità del corpo nero. Tra cesure e dissonanze, dolore ed estasi, Jefferson interroga sé stessa e sfida il concetto di autobiografia, regalandoci un memoir profondo e di incredibile bellezza.

La journaliste new-yorkaise Margo Jefferson nous offre un regard original et aiguisé sur la vie et la carrière de la star planétaire devenue monstre de foire à la fin de sa vie. Elle met en lumière tous ceux qui, chacun à leur manière, ont façonné Michael Jackson : sa famille (sa vraie famille, bien sûr, mais aussi toutes les autres familles - imaginaires ou réelles - qu''il a aimé réunir autour de lui), ses maîtres à penser (Barnum, Walt Disney, Edgar A Poe...), ses partenaires dans le show-biz, sans oublier son public.

Est-il besoin encore de présenter Michael Jackson ? Star planétaire, enfant surdoué de la danse. Son hit " Thriller " reste l''album le plus vendu au monde. Aujourd''hui pourtant, la carrière du chanteur est abîmée par de multiples scandales liés à son comportement étrange, ses excentricités et surtout ses démêlés avec la justice. Une curiosité presque morbide anime le public de Michael Jackson. Ce livre analyse la personnalité et l''histoire de cet artiste battu par son père, acculé à apprendre à danser et à chanter, confronté dès le plus jeune âge au public, et tente de répondre à cette question : qui est Michael Jackson ? Ou plutôt, qu''est-ce que Michael Jackson ? Est-il un chic type ou un prédateur ? Un protecteur ou un pédophile ? Un génie détruit ou une célébrité prête à tout pour retrouver la gloire ? Un enfant star terrorisé par la vieillesse ou un monstre, pervers, psychopathe ? C''est à ces questions que Margo Jefferson tente de répondre en analysant les différentes forces historiques, économiques, sociales qui ont formaté Michael Jackson, mais aussi son public qui l''a adulé puis rejeté.