Mother had given me that letter some years ago. The letter is full of very polite observation and gossip, but it ends with that devastating line I’m guessing that was one trigger for you thinking about these things? You kick off one chapter with an extraordinary letter your mother wrote to her friend, while she and your father were living in segregated army accommodation during the war. One way back into the history is through the lives of your parents. But those old rituals from the social clubs, to the broadly segregated white and black schools, to an obsessive interest in ancestry, all of that does still exist. Many of them are obviously much richer, and perhaps a little more integrated into what remains a white power structure. The society you describe in the book is a very particular historical moment really, before the civil rights movement, but does it persist socially? It is kind of an intimate word at this point, with lots of signifiers around it. It still sounds very different in a white person’s mouth. Margot (back row, centre) as co-captain of her high-school cheerleading team, 1964.
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