Bourgeois Blues: An American Memoir is a painstakingly reconstructed history of a relationship; that of the young author, Jake Lamar Jr., with his father, Jake Lamar Sr. However, it is also simultaneously a history of black America and its attempts to survive intact while beneath the hegemonic yoke of white supremacy. Jake Jr.’s memoir intricately intertwines race, class, gender, intergenerational relationships, and very crucially, historical period in a profound manner unparalleled as a recent example of the sociocomplexities of recent gender scholarship.