176469323X     

Constructing a nervous system : a memoir / Margo Jefferson

Jefferson, Margo, 1947- [Verfasserin/Verfasser]

First edition

New York : Pantheon Books, [2022]

197 Seiten : Illustrationen

Englisch

Erscheint auch als: Jefferson, Margo, 1947- : Constructing a nervous system. - New York : Pantheon Books, [2022] (Online-Ausgabe)

978-1-5247-4817-3 (hardcover)

978-1-5247-4818-0 (ISBN der parallelen Ausgabe); 978-1-5247-4818-0 (ISBN der parallelen Ausgabe)

2021029571

OCoLC: 1369992369     

HU 9800      Ähnliche Literatur

E185.97.J44

305.896/073

LOC-SH: Jefferson, Margo -- 1947- ; African American women -- Biography ; African American women critics -- Biography ; African Americans -- Race identity ; African Americans -- Intellectual life ; African Americans -- Social life and customs ; United States -- Race relations -- History -- Anecdotes ; United States -- Social life and customs -- Anecdotes

"Stunning for her daring originality, the author of Negroland gives us what she calls "a temperamental autobiography," comprised of visceral, intimate fragments that fuse criticism and memoir. Margo Jefferson constructs a nervous system with pieces of different lengths and tone, conjoining arts writing (poem, song, performance) with life writing (history, psychology). The book's structure is determined by signal moments of her life, those that trouble her as well as those that thrill and restore. In this nervous system: The sounds of a black spinning disc of a 1950's jazz LP as intimate and instructive as a parent's voice. The muscles and movements of a ballerina, spliced with those of an Olympic runner: template for what a female body could be. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy finds her way into the art of Kara Walker and the songs of Cécile McLorin Salvant. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner become alter egos. W.E.B. DuBois and George Eliot meet illicitly, as he appropriates lines from her story "The Hidden Veil" to write his famous "behind the veil" passages in The Souls of Black Folk. The words of multiple others (writers, singers, film characters, friends, family) act as prompts and as dialogue. The fragments of this brilliant book, while not neglecting family, race, and class, are informed by a kind of aesthetic drive: longing, ecstasy, or even acute ambivalence. Constructing a nervous system is Jefferson's relentlessly galvanizing mis en scene for unconventional storytelling as well as a platform for unexpected dramatis personae"--