Photo: Michael Lionstar
On this episode of "Literary Arts: The Archive Project," Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, cultural critic, journalist, and professor Margo Jefferson asks, “How do we teach ourselves to go beyond the limits of our own experience?” The daughter of a prominent physician and social worker-turned-socialite mother, Jefferson grew up in an upper-middle class black neighborhood of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. In this lecture, Jefferson uses her own unique experience and perspective to explore how our nation, with its seemingly infinite identities and histories, can come together to create a community. Jefferson asks us to consider: What kind of “we” is worth dreaming of and working for?
Bio:
The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson previously served as book and arts critic for Newsweek and the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica. Her memoir, "Negroland," received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author of "On Michael Jackson," and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.