-- This title will ship on or after January 28, 2025 --
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry
Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.
Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.” The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.
Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.
BIO
Imani Perry is the author of South to America, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Perry's other books include Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation; Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons.
REVIEWS
“Black in Blues is a stunningly original journey in search of the historical origins of the very soul of African American life and culture. Along the way, Perry shows, with telling detail and in engaging prose, how ‘The Blues’ became Black, and how Black people became ‘Blues People.’” -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“National Book Award winner Perry offers surprising revelations about the connection between the color blue and Black identity as she explores myth and literature, art and music, folklore and film. . . . An innovative cultural history.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With Black in Blues, Imani Perry establishes herself as the most important interpreter of Black life in our time. With intellectual skill, an artist’s eye, and the beauty of her pen, she powerfully tells the story of our people through the color blue. This is an extraordinary book.” -- Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again and We Are the Leaders
[H] Ecco Press / January 28, 2025
1.0 lbs 256 pages