“black things that didn’t belong to the world of slavery”…. Once I finally committed to it -I enjoyed what I learned….Ī little about movies, books music, art, artists, athletes, dance, ballet, childhood memories, identity, mothers, race, class, beauty, desires, education, Jefferson’s prominent medical physician father, her mother’s passion with fashion, other negro children, African-American mentors, It took me a few days of starting & stopping to find my groove. The artwork of the two dancers on the cover were eloquently lovely, but the title “Constructing A Nervous System” feels cold to me. This was my first introduction to Margo Jeffersonįor some reason, I had a mixed reaction to the book title and book cover. The gifts of reading her are many' - Darryl Pinckney, author of Sold and Gone Margo Jefferson is so real, her sensibility so literary, her learning such a joy. 'This is a moving portrait of the life of a brilliant African American woman's mind. 'If you want to know who we are and where we've been, read Margo Jefferson' - Edmund White, author of A Previous Life It takes vital risks, tosses away rungs of the ladder as it climbs, and offers an indispensable, rollicking account of the enchantments, pleasures, costs, and complexities of 'imagin and interpret what had not imagined you' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts 'Margo Jefferson's Constructing a Nervous System is as electric as its title suggests. Taking in the jazz and blues icons whom Jefferson idolised as a child in the 1950s, ideas of what the female body could be - as incarnated by trailblazing Black dancers and athletes - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy reimagined in the artworks of Kara Walker, white supremacy in the novels of Willa Cather, and more, this breathtakingly eloquent account is both a critique and a vindication of the constructed self. Margo Jefferson boldly and brilliantly fuses cultural analysis and memoir to probe race, class, family and art. 'This is one of the most imaginative - and therefore moving - memoirs I have ever read' - Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CRITIC AND ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF NEGROLAND

Negroland margo jefferson summary