{"title":"Books by Margo Jefferson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781783785568","title":"Constructing a Nervous System","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CRITIC AND ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF \u003ci\u003eNEGROLAND\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'This is one of the most imaginative - and therefore moving - memoirs I have ever read' - \u003cb\u003eVivian Gornick, author of \u003ci\u003eFierce Attachments\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMargo Jefferson boldly and brilliantly fuses cultural analysis and memoir to probe race, class, family and art.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaking 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Margo Jefferson's \u003ci\u003eConstructing a Nervous System\u003c\/i\u003e is as electric as its title suggests. 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[ing] and interpret[ing] what had not imagined you' - \u003cb\u003eMaggie Nelson, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Argonauts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'If you want to know who we are and where we've been, read Margo Jefferson' - \u003cb\u003eEdmund White, author of \u003ci\u003eA Previous Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'This is a moving portrait of the life of a brilliant African American woman's mind. Margo Jefferson is so real, her sensibility so literary, her learning such a joy. The gifts of reading her are many' - \u003cb\u003eDarryl Pinckney, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eSold and Gone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43128563073202,"sku":"9781783785568","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781783785568_b2dc8bd3-85ea-4239-ba96-79defbdd3e24.jpg?v=1786025373"},{"product_id":"9781783784202","title":"On Michael Jackson","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Jackson: provocateur, icon, enigma. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWho was he, really? And how does his spectacular rise, his catastrophic fall, reflect upon those who made him, those who broke him, and those who loved him?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlmost ten years on from Jackson's untimely death, here is Margo Jefferson's definitive and dazzling dissection of the King of Pop: a man admired for his music, his flair, his performances; and censured for his skin, his erratic behaviour, and, in his final years, for his relationships with children.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303988965749,"sku":"9781783784202","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781783784202_7a188a66-5ea5-44bc-a460-e02a379bbf5a.jpg?v=1786026222"},{"product_id":"9781803510231","title":"Negroland","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Jefferson's eye for details yields some devastatingly honest and painful insights' \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Captivating... Charm is this book's watchword' Colin Grant, \u003ci\u003eGuardian \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReckoning 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'\u003ci\u003eNegroland\u003c\/i\u003e is a sharp-eyed cultural commentary on an era of America that has often been too simply told' Aminatta Forna, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e'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' \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e'Utterly compelling... a remarkable achievement' \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307365871989,"sku":"9781803510231","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803510231_d29afd49-b164-4b47-96d8-368742ed411f.jpg?v=1786027235"},{"product_id":"9798891060050","title":"Unexplained Presence","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNow with a new afterword by MARGO JEFFERSON\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn Tisa Bryant's \u003cem\u003eUnexplained Presence\u003c\/em\u003e, readers are spectators of mis-en-scènes in which black subjectivity has been distorted and denied within various visual narratives.\u003c\/strong\u003e Moving from cultural analysis to cinematic (re)creation, Bryant's prose traverses like a tracking shot through John Schlesinger's \u003cem\u003eDarling\u003c\/em\u003e, Patricia Rozema's \u003cem\u003eMansfield Park\u003c\/em\u003e and Virginia Woolf's \u003cem\u003eOrlando\u003c\/em\u003e, giving voice to characters whom have otherwise been structurally silenced. As Pulitzer–prize winning author Margo Jefferson aptly points out in her afterword, Tisa Bryant doesn't merely write \u003cem\u003eabout\u003c\/em\u003e film; she is an \"auteur,\" a \"cultural anthropologist,\" and a \"virtuosic critic-artist.\" Since its original publication with Leon Works in 2007,\u003cem\u003e Unexplained Presence\u003c\/em\u003e has been foundational among poets, scholars, and film critics and with this publication, Tisa Bryant's legacy as one of the most innovative voices in contemporary literature is preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311308091765,"sku":"9798891060050","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9798891060050_c42c7531-3a0b-4e36-9af1-05002739f18c.jpg?v=1786032658"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-margo-jefferson.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}