At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac, this book is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of the author’s rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with distancing itself from whites and the black generality while tirelessly measuring itself against both.
Born in upper-crust black Chicago, her father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident and her mother a socialite, Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, “a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.”
The Diversity Book Club is hosted monthly by AAUW Alexandria / Women Building Cross-Cultural Friendships (WBCCF) and co-sponsored by the Alexandria Burke Branch Library.
WBCCF's goal is to give women the opportunity in a diverse and inclusive group to enrich their own lives through these relationships and help amplify the voices of all women in our community. WBCCF believes that the opportunity to come together to explore issues of race, religion, ethnicity, etc. through well-chosen books will not only further our individual learning but also create a setting in which we might ultimately decide on a community undertaking with wider implications.
The Diversity Book Club meets on the second Monday of each month at 7:00 PM.
A zoom account is not required to join, but a microphone is! Most mobile devices have microphones installed. If you're using a desk top, most webcams also have microphones built in.
If you have any questions about the program or would like to register, which is limited to the first 20 people, please contact Bonnie Hershberg by April 4, 2021 at hersh3b@gmail.com.
