Negroland : A Memoir

''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