Don't let the title of Margo Jefferson's new book, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir, fool you. By "nervous system," the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic has in mind not just the brute facts of ...

One of the features of our current literary landscape is the "in conversation" event, where one author acts as interlocutor to another. One might describe "Constructing a Nervous System" as Margo ...

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Jefferson’s “Constructing a Nervous System,” a companion to her earlier “Negroland,” explores the materials used to make identity and art. By Molly Young When you purchase an independently reviewed ...

Constructing a Nervous System, by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon). In this follow-up to “Negroland,” Jefferson merges memoir and criticism. Drawing on material as disparate as Henry James, “The Wire,” ...

Amazon workers celebrate following the April 1, 2022, vote for the unionization of the Amazon Staten Island warehouse in New York. Photo by Andrea Renault / AFP Powered by RedCircle The Amazon workers ...

Margo Jefferson, 2017. (Photo by Simone Padovani / Awakening / Getty Images) Much has been made, since the days of the ancients, of art’s desire to imitate lived experience—an absurd expectation, as ...

Margo Jefferson Makes Her WayWith her book Constructing a Nervous System, the critic set herself a challenge: to recount her life through a web of influences.