Shes one of the boldest cultural critics of the past 50 years.
But writing memoir is Margo Jeffersons true act of defiance.
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Shes composedandimposing,says Margo Jefferson.
On this day, Jefferson is lithe in draped layers, a thin scarf around her neck.
There is evidence of staging in Crabtrees ramrod pose, her orderly, unthreatening fro, her carmine-painted mouth.
She wears her diving suit.
She holds her helmet on her knee.
She looks impermeable but you know shes not, says Jefferson.
Its a summation typical of the Jeffersonian critical manner.
She published her first essay,Ripping Off Black Music,inHarpersin 1973.
Chuck Berry, unfortunately, was a nigger.
Jefferson was 26 years old.
I would say that she has a certain restlessness with form.
There are writers who venture to keep ahead of the times.
Ive always felt that the times have to give a shot to keep up with Margo.
On the page, her sentences are balletic.
They do not sweat.
And I said, There are moments where you areverygood.
I dont want you to do exactly the opposite, but look at what this is doing.
So now transfer this back to me: Margo artfully switched it to a student!
Despite this, their existence remained contested.Is There a Black Upper Class?queried theTimesin 1999.
Children always find ways to subvert while theyre busy complying, Jefferson writes inNegroland.This childs method of subversion?
She would have her revenge.
Margo was born in Chicago in 1947, younger sister to Denise.
Their mother, Irma, was a homemaker and society woman.
Theirs was a world of firsts and onlys.
The girls attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.
Margo went on to Brandeis, then Columbia.
The Jeffersons were one of few Black families residing in cushy, historic Hyde Park.
It is an island of comfort amid poverty, with Englewood nearby.
Its a strained-for oasis, Jefferson tells me.
But still an oasis.
The book begins on a stage one she saw in a dream.
(Its a big writing challenge to make ones dreams work on the page, she says.
Ive seen it fail enough times that I wanted that challenge.)
She calls it cultural memoir, temperamental memoir, temperamental autobiography.
It was a struggle to make it all cohere I worried about losing the reader.
Among the books prevalent themes is Jeffersons reality as an adult orphan.
Her father died in the 90s.
Then, in 2010, her sister died from ovarian cancer.
Before Jefferson could publishNegroland,her mother died too.
I ask Jefferson whether, like me, she considers daughter to be one of her primary identities.
She says she does.
THRUM go the materials of my life, she writes inConstructing.Chosen, imposed, inherited, made up.
I imagined it as a nervous system.
But not the standard biological one.
For her, that includes her lifelong obsession with performers specifically, male performers.
Jefferson became active in thefeminist movement of the 1970s.
I admired, I longed to possess their styles.
What made her most anxious about publishing the book was her inclusion of Ike Turner.
I knew it was a risk, she says.
I knew people would say, Youve got some goddamn nerve.
She roams through the crevices of her mind, through its makings, fixations, and perceived shortcomings.
The writing moves among first person, second, third.
In any other hands, the fear of disjointedness would be justified.
And I was not good at assuming other characters and other voices.
I was kind of a personality gal, right?
So Id sometimes tell myself,Okay, youre doing this in writing, youre invoking.
Thats how you found a way to do this: to be a kind of character actor.
