Constructing A Nervous System Margo Jefferson by Margo Jefferson instant download after payment.

In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise & occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics.

In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters her self into pieces & recombines them into a new & vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, & signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past & accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. 

Bing Crosby & Ike Turner are among the author’s alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate & instructive sounds of a parent’s voice. W. E. B. Du Bois & George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles & movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a black female body can be.

The result is a wildly innovative work of depth & stirring beauty. It is defined by fractures & dissonance, longing & ecstasy, & a persistent searching. Jefferson interrogates her own self as well as the act of writing memoir, & probes the fissures at the center of American cultural life.

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The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, MARGO JEFFERSON was for years a theater & book critic for Newsweek & The NY Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, NY magazine, & The New Republic. She is the author of On Michael Jackson & Negroland: A Memoir & is a professor of writing at Columbia School of Arts.&nbs