On Wednesday, September 28, Staff Writer Phoebe Mulder attended a conversation between Deborah Paredez and Margo Jefferson on Jefferson’s Constructing A Nervous System: A Memoir.

On a clear Wednesday evening, event-goers streamed steadily into the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screening Room in the Lenfest Center for the Arts. The event in question: a discussion with Margo Jefferson, Journalism ‘71, on her newest book, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir. The discussion was hosted by Columbia’s Complex Issues series, which explores ideas of difference, visibility, and representation through recent work by the faculty of Columbia University. As the 6:30 pm sky darkened outside the screening room’s massive windows, event-goers found seats and flipped through programs, settling in for the first discussion of the 2022-2023 season. Whether it was because of the inaugural nature of the event, Margo Jefferson’s preceding reputation, or the glowing reviews of Constructing a Nervous System, the room seemed to thrum with an anticipatory current. 

Finally, the lights dimmed, the murmurs hushed, and Deborah Paredez ascended the stage steps. Paredez, an associate professor at the Professional Practice Writing Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and author of the critical study Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009) hosted the event for the evening. She introduced Jefferson, detailing her work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of three books: Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir (2022); Negroland: A Memoir (2015); and On Michael Jackson (2005). “Margo is,” Paredez concluded, “a model for engaging with depth.” 

This phrase set the tone for the rest of the discussion, and indeed seemed to encapsulate Jefferson and her writing perfectly. Jefferson began the evening with a reading from Constructing a Nervous System. She greeted the room, adjusted her microphone, and spoke in a grave, steady tone. “I stood in a bright, harsh light,” she began reading. “The stage was bare. I extended my arm–no, flung, hurled it out–pointed an accusatory finger, then turned to an unseen audience and declared, this is the woman with only one childhood.” The parallel between the opening scene of Jefferson’s memoir and the actual event in progress was potent; the audience grew even quieter, more in tune with Jefferson. Jefferson then described the goals behind Constructing a Nervous System. She wanted to fuse memoir and criticism together; to turn her critical eye inwards toward herself, her stories, and her childhood. Constructing a Nervous System is the result of this endeavor. 

Stretching the boundaries of a memoir, Jefferson employs a wide cast of characters. She includes imagined conversations with impactful figures from her childhood, ranging from family members, Jazz luminaries, writers, athletes, and pop stars. Her memoir has been described as being “defined by fractures and dissonance.” And as Paredez and Jefferson began their conversation, these descriptions developed a clearer, more meaningful weight. 

Paredez first asked how Jefferson came up with the first concepts for the memoir. What inspired the cast of characters? What inspired the title? Jefferson shared that, in her twenties, she would flip through the thick chapters of anatomy books incessantly. She appreciated “connecting with an elaborately structured discipline.” Constructing a Nervous System is her attempt to emulate this shape and order; it exemplifies the intensity of a memoir, the removed distance of criticism, and the discipline of referential academic text. 

Jefferson explained how including other figures, family members, and childhood idols in her work allowed her to remain, “sharp as a narrator.” She played with persona, typeface, and time jumps, constantly pushing her writing style in new directions. She spent the writing process searching for “ostensibly unheard things,” wanting to create something completely original, to tackle a sedate, entrenched genre with distinct originality.  

Many of the characters in Jefferson’s memoir were pop stars she idolized as a child. She included scenes and reflections on them in her work, shaping herself through identification with the performers. Paredez and Jefferson discussed the experience of being both a critic and a fan—how do you reckon with an artist? How do you engage with a public figure who no longer deserves their pedestal? Jefferson pushed against the word “reckon,” calling it “ubiquitous in today’s world.” She said she hopes to take the entirety of the person in. “You never fully hate them,”  Jefferson said of childhood idols, “though the love may be twisted.” 

Paredez then raised a word that appeared frequently in the latter half of Constructing a Nervous System: diva. What is a diva, she asked. What is the significance of that word? Jefferson wrote about many people often described as “divas” in her memoir, including Nina Simone, Betty Davis, and Ethel Waters. However, she expressed a desire to push Black women out of this category. Diva, she explained, is ultimately a word of diminishment and racialization used to demean Black women. Jefferson spoke of the need for a ‘“counter-diva,” a model of anger and rage. Jefferson acknowledged that the model can exist on many scales, but its existence is necessary regardless. Her elder sister was her own “rage model,” and taught her that anger is “something to be seized.” 

The discussion was lively, never remaining in the same place for long. Jefferson pivoted from celebrity analysis to personal anecdotes. There was one running theme throughout the evening, however. Jefferson spoke consistently of duality. Her book was both criticism and memoir; she wrote with both an uber-narrative self and a genuine vulnerability. You love and hate childhood idols, you search for guidance from celebrities and older sisters. As the floor was opened to audience questions, she spoke of teaching and learning from her students, and the importance of looking at history through both zoomed-out and personal lenses. In her initial introduction, Paredez described Jefferson’s talent as a “lone star.” But during the discussion, Margo Jefferson had a way not of rising above, but of bringing everyone onto the same plane, creating connections between people, themes, and the array of ideas present in Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir.

Event poster via Claire Holt, Lenfest Center for the Arts