Summary

In Chapter I, Jefferson describes the disorienting experience of waking from a dream in which she was performing and addressing herself (3). She realized that, like Bill Bojangles Robinson, she needed a light, then a blackout (3). After the light came back on, she would “construct another nervous system” (4).

Throughout her “adult life,” Jefferson has tried “to become a person of complex and stirring character” (4). She has done so by breaking away her “unworthy parts” (4). However, these efforts have proved dissatisfying. She has realized that she needs to make a new self from “recombinant thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and words” (4, Jefferson’s italics).

Jefferson has spent years writing both criticism and memoir. She has developed ways to describe her reasons for writing in each genre, yet now wants the genres and selves “to merge” (5). She knows, however, that her past will influence her writing. Writing...