'Jefferson's eye for details yields some devastatingly honest and painful insights' The Times
'Captivating... Charm is this book's watchword' Colin Grant Guardian The daughter of a
successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among
Chicago's black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America
where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege
came expectation. Reckoning with the limits and demands of Negroland at crucial historical
moments - the civil rights movement the dawn of feminism the fallacy of post-racial America -
Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral
contradictions. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and winner of the National Book
Critics Circle Award. ' Negroland is a sharp-eyed cultural commentary on an era of America
that has often been too simply told' Aminatta Forna Guardian 'Jefferson writes with
piercing clarity of a childhood which was full of love and opportunity at home but also
saturated by contradictions confusions and a racism which corrodes like rust to the heart's
core' Observer 'Utterly compelling... a remarkable achievement' Sunday Times
