Want to know what books Margo Jefferson recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Margo Jefferson's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
In Woolf's last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, a country house in the heart of England, where the villagers are presenting their annual pageant.
The book weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of a war which is to change the pattern of history. more In Woolf's last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, a country house in the heart of England, where the villagers are presenting their annual pageant.
The book weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of a war which is to change the pattern of history. less 
Margo JeffersonThere’s almost a touch of the allegorical. When I was re-reading it, I realised the characters are interesting, they’re poignant, they’re touching, but it’s about the larger purpose that they serve. Woolf’s language keeps moving us that way. (Source)
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2
Adrienne Kennedy, Werner Sollors | 4.41
Introduction by Werner Sollors
Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon peopleOCOs lives, KennedyOCOs plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years.
This first comprehensive... more Introduction by Werner Sollors
Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon peopleOCOs lives, KennedyOCOs plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years.
This first comprehensive collection of her most important works traces the development of KennedyOCOs unique theatrical oeuvre from her Obie-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) through significant later works such as A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), Ohio State Murders (1992), and June and Jean in Concert, for which she won an Obie in 1996. The entire contents of KennedyOCOs groundbreaking collections In One Act and The Alexander Plays are included, as is her earliest work Because of the King of France and the play An Evening with Dead Essex (1972). More recent prose writings Secret Paragraphs about My Brother, A Letter to Flowers, and Sisters Etta and Ella are fascinating refractions of the themes and motifs of her dramatic works, even while they explore new material on teaching and writing. An introduction by Werner Sollors provides a valuable overview of KennedyOCOs career and the trajectory of her literary development.
Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) is a three-time Obie-award winning playwright whose works have been widely performed and anthologized. Among her many honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995-6, the Signature Theatre Company dedicated its entire season to presenting her work. She has been commissioned to write works for the Public Theater, Jerome Robbins, the Royal Court Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and Juilliard, and she has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. She lives in New York City.
" less Margo JeffersonAdrienne Kennedy’s plays are plays as states of mind, and they explored and exploded with revelations about black women and middle-class woman who longed to be artists. They were wracked by cultural constrictions and feverish imaginations. Her observations were absolutely fresh. (Source)
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3
High Cotton is an extraordinarily rich account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing the essence of a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being. more High Cotton is an extraordinarily rich account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing the essence of a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being. less Margo JeffersonHigh Cotton does work as a Bildungsroman: the young man coming of age, finding himself, declaring himself, moving out of and resisting the world that he is supposed to not only know but accept…. But it keeps breaking out of that, too (Source)
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4
Elizabeth Hardwick, Geoffrey O'Brien | 3.83
In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years. more In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years. less Margo JeffersonIn terms of literary form and history, one of the interesting things is that Hardwick called it a novel, it was published as a novel, and it is now being written about as a hybrid form – as an early and potent example of what we are now calling experimental, hybrid non-fiction (Source)
Hermione HobyShe’s occupying the space of her own memory, for which New York is a vessel, or a conduit. (Source)
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