03521cam a2200565 i 4500 553662440 TxAuBib 20220413120000.0 210710s2022||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2021029571 9781524748173 hardcover $27.00 152474817X hardcover $27.00 (OCoLC)1252763617 TxAuBib rda Jefferson, Margo, 1947- Constructing A Nervous System : A Memoir / Margo Jefferson. First edition. New York : Pantheon Books, [2022] 197 pages ; 20 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references. "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"-- Provided by publisher. 20220413. Jefferson, Margo, 1947- 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. African American women. African American women critics. African Americans Intellectual life. African Americans Race identity. African Americans Social life and customs. Manners and customs. Race relations. United States Race relations History Anecdotes. United States Social life and customs Anecdotes. United States. Anecdotes. Biographies. History. Autobiographies. Anecdotes. Jefferson, Margo, 1947-, First edition. TXMAR