Negroland is where the black upper class lives and the author, a Pulitzer winner, grew up and lived at its heart. She tells of how many blacks moved north after freedom, and how those who were capable and worked hard (it didn't hurt to be light-skinned) grasped at education and moved into the professions. Her grandmothers were among them and both of her parents were privileged. Her mother graduated from the University of Chicago and her father was a noted physician. She was born in 1947 and attended the University of Chicago Lab Schools, received a superb education and was taught to be a lady. She describes her class as between the whites and blacks. They looked down on the rough and tumble world of blue collar blacks, but knew they had to be wary, very wary, around whites. She went to summer camps around the midwest, joined the Jacks and Jills ( a black social organization) and went to college at Brandeis. She lived a life of true privilege.
But to be black in America is no bargain, and although a success (she worked at the Times), she has apparently struggled with identity issues and relationships. The book loses some its oomph at the end when she goes off on tangents about who she would like to be in 'Little Women.' That said, it is very good, and certainly worth the effort for anyone who isn't familiar with the institutions, people and culture of Negroland.
Any book like this causes one to pause and reflect. I have some familiarity with the upper class through the novels of Stephen Carter, a Yale professor. I also grew up next to St. Albans in Queens, which I have since learned was a bastion of black success and privilege. I find it sad that someone who had such opportunity feels that the burden of being black outweighed the advantages she had.
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