At the Times, Jefferson won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for her book reviews and other cultural criticism, and she brings her critical skills to bear as she probes the expectations that shaped her own life. This was an upbringing with considerable and isolating social pressures, and a requirement to be high-functioning and indomitable in the precarious world of a "third race." She was expected to be impeccable but not arrogant, confident but obliging and reserved.