The Most Discussed Novel of the Year — An Unflinching Revelation of a Forbidden Theme.

From the quiet, sun-baked streets of Boise to the throbbing, jazz-filled cabarets of Harlem, Mr. Wallace Thurman traces the troubled journey of Emma Lou Morgan. A girl of education and refinement, she seeks only happiness and a place to belong. Yet, she bears a burden that society—both white and Negro—will not let her forget: the "blue-black" hue of her skin. In a world mad for whiteness, where the "blue vein" societies of her own people bar the door to those of darker complexion, Emma Lou fights a lonely and courageous battle against the stinging lash of color prejudice found within the Fold itself.

Here is no sentimental romance, but a novel of pitiless realism. We follow Emma Lou to the University of Southern California, where sororities judge by the shade of a cheek rather than the depth of a soul, and finally to the "Mecca of the New Negro"—Harlem. Amidst the rent parties, the employment agencies that hang out the sign "Light Colored Girls Only," and the glittering dance halls, she learns that the most crushing hierarchies are often those built by the oppressed themselves. It is a story of love sought and rejected, of the "wrong" kind of friends, and of a woman's desperate struggle to accept herself in a world that refuses to do so.

Mr. Thurman, already known as a brilliant satirist and the daring editor of Fire!!, writes with a pen dipped in irony and truth. He exposes the raw nerves of the race problem with a boldness that will shock the complacent and liberate the thoughtful. The Blacker the Berry is a challenge to the conscience of America—a book that proves the hardest chains to break are sometimes those forged by our own kin.