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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
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.
Book Details
- Publisher: Harper Large Print
- Publish Date: Jan 28th, 2025
- Pages: 368
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
- EAN: 9780063386273
- Categories: • African American & Black• Black Studies (Global)• American - African American & Black
About the Author
Imani Perry is the National Book Award-winning author of South to America, as well as seven other books of 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, and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons.
Praise for this book
"Imani Perry's work is brilliant and lyrical as ever! How clearly she assesses the history of Black and Blue, knitting them together with language both precise and haunting. This book is a great gift, in that it allowed me to see the world anew with Perry's clear-eyed insight. How Perry allows me to understand my Blue better, too!" -- Jesmyn Ward, author of Let Us Descend and Sing, Unburied, Sing
"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.
"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
"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)
"Imani Perry's Black in Blues is a masterful convergence of literature, history, and culture--where color itself becomes the field for reflection and revelation. The sheer span of Perry's thinking, like the sweep of a great sky, stirs the most breathtaking of elusive emotions: awe." -- Evan Osnos, author of Wildland and Age of Ambition
"An impressionistic cultural history of the African diaspora through its connections to the color blue, from the Congo to Haiti, Jamaica, and the American South, in music, dance, folklore, art, and literature. . . . Packed with cultural references to Nina Simone, Zora Neale Hurston, Miles Davis, and Picasso's African-inspired Blue Period, this is a fascinating and creative work of popular anthropology . . . Original and affecting." -- Booklist (starred review)
"A lyrical meditation on 'the mystery of blue and its alchemy in the lives of Black folk.' . . . In direct and intimate prose, Perry synthesizes an impressive range of research into a sinewy, pulsing narrative that positions the past as an active, living force in the present. Readers will be swept up." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)