Mirkat Always Reading

Margo Jefferson, born in 1947 into a wealthy African-American family in Chicago, writes about a segment of African-American culture she dubs "Negroland":  wealthy, educated African Americans who occupy a space of privilege, holding at arms' length both Caucasians and African Americans who don't belong to the "Negroland" caste.  Jefferson traces the caste back to slave days in the American south.  Problematically, children of slave owners and slaves are ancestors of people in "Negroland."

Although identified as a "memoir," the author endeavors to report on sociology and popular culture, as well as her own biographical stories.

Unfortunately, despite finding the topic interesting, I couldn't quite connect to the author's narrative style.  There were parts of the book where it seemed the author was going to such lengths to maintain a distance from her topic, that the content came out dry and dull.  There were sections about her childhood stories where she used a distracting technique of using first initials instead of names, and somehow those sections provided way too much detail about childhood events that were not particularly interesting.  "L did this; T said that."

There were moments when the author offered glimpses of what the book could have been; when she drops the distance and shares her personal stories.  But unfortunately, there were not enough moments like this.