Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - Softcover

Jefferson, Margo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178378556X ISBN 13: 9781783785568

Publisher: Granta Books, 2023

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CRITIC AND ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF NEGROLAND

'This is one of the most imaginative - and therefore moving - memoirs I have ever read' - Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments

Margo Jefferson boldly and brilliantly fuses cultural analysis and memoir to probe race, class, family and art.

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's Constructing a Nervous System 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' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

'If you want to know who we are and where we've been, read Margo Jefferson' - Edmund White, author of A Previous Life

'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' - Darryl Pinckney, author of Sold and Gone

About this title

About the Author

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, MARGO JEFFERSON was for years a theater and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York magazine, and The New Republic. She is the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.

From the Back Cover

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and acclaimed author of Negroland boldly and brilliantly fuses cultural analysis and memoir to probe race, class, family and art.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 178378556X
• ISBN 13: 9781783785568
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208