She/her/hers. Writer/intellectual/mother Professor @Harvard rep. by @CindyUh @CAA Speaking @LyceumAgency
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Articles by Imani Perry
Freedom is a community: Inkubator 2026 to host Colson Whitehead, celebrate Toni Morrison
Tags: Arts + Culture Cities: Downtown Cleveland Heights Note: Press "Esc" on your keyboard to close Fullscreen mode, or click the minimize icon. The Inkubator keynote speaker audience. Toni Morrison is kissed by her mother Ramah Wofford on the occasion of Toni’s visit to Lorain to accept an award from the Lorain Chamber of Commerce. January 12, 1982. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Inkubator key note speaker Colson Whitehead. Inkubator attendees socialize.
What Is Freedom: Imani Perry
Freedom is as freedom does. It was not in 1776, when Benjamin Franklin still bought, sold and owned people And Madison, and Jefferson and Washington too- And somebody whose name I don’t know in Maryland Owned my mother mother mother mother mother Esther. I come from old growth Blackness Born out of the thicket of American lies and contortions.
Extract — Black in Blues: How a Colour Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
Read an extract from Imani Perry's Black in Blues: How a Colour Tells the Story of My People (Allen Lane, 2026). Drawing from her own experiences, global history, and encounters with music, literature, and art, Perry traces how Blackness and the colour blue have been entwined for centuries — from the West African dyed indigo cloths that were once traded for human life, to American blues music, to Toni Morrison's writing, and more.
Tayari Jones: The 100 Most Influential People of 2026
A daughter of Atlanta and a writer of the world, Tayari Jones has blazed her own path through American fiction. Her sensitive coming-of-age stories bloom into rich landscapes of Black women’s interior lives. In them, key social issues and important historical moments come alive by way of her characters’ wounds, yearnings, and dreams.
Remembering DéLana R.A. Dameron
Poet, Novelist, Equestrian, Community Builder, Philanthropist “People came by plane; people drove over 20 hours to sit together in her living room. Exactly as she would have it. It was tradition.
The Interview with Imani Perry.
Greetings and welcome to Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s Sitting in Silence, an inspirational newsletter and podcast for writers, readers, and thinkers. I hope you’re enjoying the summer as much as I am. The interview is a popular ongoing feature dating back to February 2022, when I started SIS. I love talking to writers about inspiration, craft, and life. They never disappoint. So, from time to time, you’ll find these intimate and enlightening conversations in this space.
Imani Perry: Art Is a Tool to Fight Racial Injustice Original
Larcenia Floyd died in 2018, two years before George. But when her son was being asphyxiated to death by Derek Chauvin, he screamed for her. It was the “Mama!” heard around the world, an anguished incantation that called millions into the streets to protest. That wail of loss—the sound of a ripped-apart parent and child—to the cold hands of premature death has been a commonplace of Black American life throughout history.
Black scholar writes cultural history through blue lens | DON NOBLE
Imani Perry should now be considered one of the true expert commentators on Black America. She has books on Lorraine Hansbury, the Black national anthem, hip-hop and she recently won the National Book Award for “South to America,” her examination of how the rest of the country is not so very different, in a variety of negative ways, from the American South. She has also received a MacArthur Grant and in 2023, the Clarence Cason Award at the University of Alabama.
10 new books that illuminate the lives of women
What do readers need to know about the lives of women, past, present and future? There are infinite answers to this question, just as there are infinite ways to be a woman. For Women's History Month this March, dive into one of these illuminating new books that cover everything from coming of age to motherhood to gender transitioning to menopause. Encompassing both fiction and nonfiction, these 2025 titles are either in bookstores now or will hit shelves through March and April.
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
Black arts and letters have been concerned, for most of U.S. history, with matters of social justice. The events that have compelled Black writers to write and the dynamics that have shaped Black experience have long intertwined, like barbed wire, with injustice. Black history books, for example, often chronicle human-rights abuses and commemorate resilient and courageous leaders of the masses who are in search of true freedom from those abuses. This is important work.
Review: Does one color mean something special to Black folks?
Like the color blue, Imani Perry’s “Black in Blues” is vast, multifaceted and enchanting. Perry’s book, also like the hue, defies categorization. Her exploration of blue is presented in 35 tight, radiant chapters that read like a blend of memoir and history. kAm%96J’C6 >@C6 E92? >6>@:C 2?5 9:DE@CJ[ E9@F89] q642FD6 E96 A2DE :D AC@=@8F6[ 2D H6 <?@H D@ H6== E96D6 52JD[ H92E’D 9:DE@C:42= 2=D@ 6?5D FA 36:?8 A6CD@?2=] x? “q=24< :?
Review: Does one color mean something special to Black folks?
Like the color blue, Imani Perry’s “Black in Blues” is vast, multifaceted and enchanting. Perry’s book, also like the hue, defies categorization. Her exploration of blue is presented in 35 tight, radiant chapters that read like a blend of memoir and history. kAm%96J’C6 >@C6 E92? >6>@:C 2?5 9:DE@CJ[ E9@F89] q642FD6 E96 A2DE :D AC@=@8F6[ 2D H6 <?@H D@ H6== E96D6 52JD[ H92E’D 9:DE@C:42= 2=D@ 6?5D FA 36:?8 A6CD@?2=] x? “q=24< :?
Review: Does one color mean something special to Black folks?
By Michael Kleber-Diggs, The Minnesota Star Tribune Like the color blue, Imani Perry’s “Black in Blues” is vast, multifaceted and enchanting. Perry’s book, also like the hue, defies categorization. Her exploration of blue is presented in 35 tight, radiant chapters that read like a blend of memoir and history. They’re more than memoir and history, though. Because the past is prologue, as we know so well these days, what’s historical also ends up being personal.
Does one color mean something special to Black folks?
Like the color blue, Imani Perry's "Black in Blues" is vast, multifaceted and enchanting. Perry's book, also like the hue, defies categorization. Her exploration of blue is presented in 35 tight, radiant chapters that read like a blend of memoir and history. They're more than memoir and history, though. Because the past is prologue, as we know so well these days, what's historical also ends up being personal.
BLACK IN BLUES by Imani Perry Read by Imani Perry | Audiobook Review | AudioFile Magazine
Imani Perry contemplates the connection between the color blue and African and African American history and culture. From the traditional practice of dying indigo cloth in West Africa to the blues musical tradition in America, Perry posits Black life has always been entangled with the color blue. She performs her stunning narration in a soft, rhythmic voice, drawing listeners into her riveting examination of the color blue in all its forms.
Black History Month book recommendations from the Toronto Public Library
Bookworms, be aware — the Toronto Public Library (TPL) has released a list of recommendations for adult readers to consider during Black History Month. The list, which features the works of Black authors, contains a mix of fiction and non-fiction reads, with something sure to appeal to every type of book borrower. TPL recommended a total of 20 books in honour of February's Black History Month.
The History of Blackness Is Entwined With Blue
We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, please join us as a member. Editor’s Note: The following text has been excerpted with permission and adapted from Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (© 2025 by Imani Perry), published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, and available online. The n-word appears below in quotes that the author uses to analyze language, power, and art.
What to Read Next: Black History Month 2025
What to Read Next: Black History Month 2025 February is the perfect time to take a beat and celebrate authors, old, new, and rediscovered, who exemplify the greatest of Black literature. From revered authors like Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin to powerhouse voices we love like Imani Perry and Zeinab Badawi, these picks are guaranteed to help you celebrate Black literature all year round. Please enable javascript to add items to the cart.
'Black in Blues,' by Imani Perry Original
BLACK IN BLUES: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, by Imani Perry It is also, as Imani Perry illuminates in a new book that swirls and flicks like an actual marble, a color inextricable from the Black race. Most clearly in the blues, the genre of music that evolved from spirituals and work songs and was quickly seized upon by a growing mass market, "made of sheets of sound, layered and unstable, that could make you feel much more than words," as she writes.
The Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books and Memoirs of 2025
Every year brings new opportunities to learn and grow, and one of the most rewarding ways to do so is by reading nonfiction books and memoirs that anchor you in the present, educate you on the past, and provide a sense of hope for the future. They allow us to expand our horizons, connect more deeply with others, and better understand ourselves.
Imani Perry investigates the significance of the color blue in Black culture Original
Harvard professor and Birmingham, Alabama, native Imani Perry won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction for “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.” Perry’s award-winning opus follows her journey through 10 Southern states to magnify the region’s far-reaching impact on America’s long-term success.
Seven books to read in 2025
Here is a curated list of some exciting upcoming works from the University of Georgia Press and Athens’ Avid Bookshop. These new releases offer a unique mix of voices, stories and perspectives. By Grady Hendrix Genre: Horror, thriller, psychological Release date: Jan. 14 Hendrix tells a haunting tale of Fern’s time at Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida — a secretive home for unwed pregnant women, where they are hidden away to give birth in silence.
Most-Anticipated Nonfiction of Spring 2025
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BLACK IN BLUES | Kirkus Reviews
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence. The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary.
These disability memoirs confront ableism and champion accessibility
Up until her death in early 2023, Judith “Judy” Heumann was an advocate at the very forefront of the movement demanding equity for disabled folks.
The Playwright Who Fearlessly Reimagines America
When the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks was in high school, a teacher asked what she wanted to be as an adult. Parks already knew. She had been sitting under the family piano writing songs and plays since elementary school. “I was like, ‘I wanna be a writer,’” she recalled. The teacher’s response was not encouraging.
The Playwright Who Fearlessly Reimagines America Original
In her new play, 'Sally & Tom,' Suzan-Lori Parks brings exuberant provocation to the gravest historical questions. Suzan-Lori Parks Credit... Arielle Bobb-Willis for The New York Times When the playwright Suzan- Lori Parks was in high school,a teacher asked what she wanted to be as an adult. Parks already knew. She had been sitting under the family piano writing songs and plays since elementary school. "I was like, 'I wanna be a writer,'" she recalled. The teacher's response was not encouraging.
Photographing Black Self-Creation in the American South Original
Contemporary rural places are rendered all but invisible in the American public imagination; we are a nation that celebrates big cities and suburbs. But rural towns are not only an integral part of the national fabric; they are often key to understanding our story. Hardtack, a new book from the photographer Rahim Fortune, is a case in point. Fortune’s portraiture captures the work of Black self-creation in the thick of a humid, hard-earned history.
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