Technically, Margo Jefferson grew up in the south-side neighborhoods of Park Manor and Hyde Park. But metaphorically she comes from Negroland—her name for a small segment of black America “where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.” Her father was the head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital; her mother graduated from the University of Chicago. Her family belonged to the most exclusive black clubs, and their friends included the city’s most prominent lawyers and clergymen, academics and publishers, plus an opera singer and an Olympic athlete.
Jefferson, who grew up to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic for the New York Times, writes most affectingly about her struggle with depression—an anathema to both the proper Negro lady she was raised to be and the strong black woman she was expected to embody as an adult. How, she wonders, can you reconcile your responsibility as a representative of your people with your responsibility to yourself as an individual human being?
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