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Title: Black in Blues | Author: Imani Perry | Publisher: Ecco (2025)

The South has remained the region where the majority of African Americans live. And even with the declining population in the Blackest South, the Blackest Southerners remain. So the question I always ask is not why did Black folks leave, but why did they stay?

The answer is home. If everyone had departed, no one would have been left to tend the ancestors’ graves. When you walk past a plantation, even if not outfitted soberly or joyously in the history of slavery, you are forced to remember something. And it is a vile, bloody remembrance, but it is also one that should strike awe at the human mastery of existence that is evidenced in the blues, in the experience of the divine in the spirit-body, that keloid-covered, scarred Black body, that violated, hungry, sparely clothed body, the labor-flattened, thick-soled feet. Had these graves not been seen, daily, over generations, had we not been witnesses to them, I do not know how it would have been possible to sustain hope, or at least to pretend to.

American exceptionalism, that sense that we are somehow special and ordained as such, is a myth sedimented on Southern prosperity: oil, coal, and cotton. Every piece of evidence of our national distinction has relied upon this wealth of the nation. As you certainly have already gleaned, I do not think genocide, slavery, and exploitation were worth it. Nor do I believe they should be tidily set aside in moments of patriotic fervor or national piety like the Fourth of July or the following days: President’s, King’s, Labor, or Memorial. But even if you are a lover of the national romance, integrity requires that the stories be at least halfway honest. It is not enough to set aside a little time or attention here or there to grieve our national sins, then, soft as butter, turn back to proclamations of greatness. Because history is an instruction. And what you neglect to attend to from the past, you will surely ignore in the present.

from Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (2021)

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This Unruly Witness. June Jordan's Legacy, Edited by Durell M. Callier, Dominique C. Hill, Lauren Muller, and Becky Thompson, Foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Afterword by Imani Perry, Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL, 2025

#graphic design #poetry #book #cover #book cover #june jordan #durell m. callier #dominique c. hill #lauren muller #becky thompson #alexis pauline gumbs #imani perry #haymarket books #2020s

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.