Growing up in “Negroland”

Growing up in the 1950s as a member of Chicago’s black upper class came with privilege and social pressures. That is the setting for MARGO JEFFERSON’s new memoir, Negroland, a place where she says children were warned that most whites would be glad to see them returned to a life of subservience. She explores race, sex and American culture through the lens of her upbringing and education among the black elite. Jefferson won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and worked for years as a theater and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.