Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

When Jill Nelson went to work for the Washington Post's new Sunday magazine in 1986, she had plenty of misgivings. She'd been a respected freelance writer for over a decade and treasured her professional independence, but how could she turn down an opportunity most journalists would kill for, at one of the nation's premier newspapers? "Sick of committing class suicide in the name of righteousness," she took the offer, and in doing so became the new magazine's first black and first female writer simultaneously.Thus opens this provocative memoir by an exciting and entirely unpredictable new voice. Nelson's recounting of her four turbulent years at the Post leads her to deeper reflections on both her career as a journalist and her heritage as a child of the affluent black bourgeoisie, who grew up on New York's Upper West Side, attended private schools, and vacationed on Martha's Vineyard.Her struggle to fit in at the paper parallels her own inner struggle to walk "the thin line between Uncle Tomming and Mau-Mauing," and to come to terms with her complex family history and the forces that compelled her to take job at the Post. Her inability to tolerate the paper's paternalistic corporate culture, coupled with her need to resolve the conflict between her privileged background and her desire to be a true "race woman," put her at odds with many of her colleagues and superiors, and drove her to confront her own internal contradictions.