FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
In this intricate, insightful, and deeply moving work of nonfiction, author/narrator Imani Perry meanders through the South, from New Orleans and DC to the Georgia coast and the West Virginia hills. With a blend of history and personal stories, she explores the South—its culture, language, geography, food, politics—and the crucial role it has played in American history and mythology. Her musical narration is as beautifully assured as her prose, full of the rhythm and cadences of her native Alabama. Though much of the audiobook is a reckoning with racism and white supremacy, it is also a gorgeous, complicated love letter—love you can hear in every sentence Perry speaks. Overflowing with urgent stories and narrated with so much passion and grace, this is a must-listen. L.S. 2022 National Book Award Winner © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
10/25/2021
Perry (Looking for Lorraine), a professor of African American studies at Princeton, interweaves personal and regional history in this impressionistic study of the American South. Adding depth and nuance to standard portrayals of “lost cause” narratives of white supremacy, Perry highlights moments of “resistance to the slave-based society.” During a visit to Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., she notes that the state, which seceded from Virginia in 1861 to remain with the Union, is “foundationally anti-slavery,” and cites examples of how Appalachia has nurtured Black educational excellence, including the interracial Highlander Folk School. Elsewhere, Perry delves into North Carolina’s history of racial trauma, including the 1898 white supremacist uprising in Wilmington and the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, and, in an enlightening discussion with art collector Walter Evans, considers Low Country architecture, the Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier rivalry, and the effects of desegregation on Black cultural networks. Perry’s meditations range far and wide, alluding to literary theorists, basketball stars, Supreme Court rulings, and her own ancestors with equal familiarity and insight, though the breadth often comes at the expense of depth, particularly when she is relating historical events, such as abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry. Still, this is a rich and imaginative tour of a crucial piece of America. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Any attempt to classify this ambitious work, which straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing—well, that’s a fool’s errand and only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project…. An essential meditation on the South, its relationship to American culture—even Americanness itself…. This work—and I use the term for both Perry’s labor and its fruit — is determined to provoke a return to the other legacy of the South, the ever-urgent struggle toward freedom.” — Tayari Jones, The New York Times Book Review
"In South to America, Perry shows readers that there is no one archetype of the American South, as she considers everything from immigrant communities to the legacy of slavery to her own ancestral roots." — Time
“Provocative, perspective-shifting…. Rendered in exquisite detail…. In this vibrant, revelatory book, Perry proves herself to be a radiant storyteller…like Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Nina Simone before her.” — Oprah Daily
“Perry is deft and disciplined, her efforts to situate the beauty, oddity, and terror that mark southern life are critical and compelling. As a travel writer, she embraces detours with an eye toward discovery…. Perry asks what it means to be tied to a ‘land of big dreams and bigger lies’ when one is committed to the pursuit of a truth that bursts the nation at its seams.” — Vulture
"This history of the American South examines its subject from both personal and sociopolitical perspectives... [Perry] draws connections between the past and contemporary experience." — New Yorker
“Breathtaking…. Extraordinary…. In the realm of Southern letters it has no real antecedent. It is that fresh, that vital, that intellectually supercharged, that incandescent.” — Garden & Gun
"[Perry] tells rich stories of place while ignoring the borders dividing disciplines and genres, weaving personal experiences with deep history, economics and cultural critique." — Los Angeles Times
“Engrossing…. [Perry] cannily frames her investigation as a travelogue, moving from Appalachia to the Upper South to the Deep South to outliers like Florida and Cuba…. The book’s pleasures are many…. Her vignettes spark off the page…. An immersive read.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“South to America marks time like Beloved did. Similarly, we will talk not solely of books about the south, but books generally as before or after South to America. I have known and loved the South for four decades and Imani Perry has shown me that there is so much more in our region’s fleshy folds to know, explore and love. It is simply the most finely crafted and rigorously conceived book about our region, and nation, I have ever read.” — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
“[Perry] focuses on a place and reflects on its distinctive relationship to the region’s history of slavery and racism, drawing on her own extensive knowledge of literature, music, art, and folklore, as well as her own family history.” — NPR's Fresh Air
"Perry has a knack for the simple observation that showcases the contradictions Americans endure or ignore." — Washington Post
“In the tradition of native daughters and sons returning home and cataloging the journey, Imani Perry undertakes an exploration of and meditation on the many Souths that make up the American southland. Part pilgrimage, part elegy and clarion call, South to America is wide-ranging, associative and seamlessly woven—an ambitious sweep of history, culture, language. Perry’s intellect is capacious. Moving deftly between registers, she proves to be an insightful and compelling guide." — Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive
“Perry scrutinizes the destination, and plucks threads from its history, its culture, its personality; then she weaves them together to tell a story about the place that reflects, informs, or portends our national psyche. The result is a compelling, thought-provoking read sure to spark both consensus and debate, but ultimately it serves to illustrate just how much race impacts life in this country.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
"Perry’s seamlessly crafted work is a tour-de-force reckoning." — Literary Hub
“Powerful…. Perry lets us hear what the voices have to tell us, so we can make up our own minds about where we are and how far we’ve come.” — Christian Science Monitor
“[A] saturated, gorgeously written, and keenly revelatory travelogue...Perry's southern tour is intimate and encompassing, finely laced and steely, affecting and transformative.” — Booklist (starred review)
“[Perry] melds memoir, travel narrative, and history in an intimate, penetrating journey through the South…. A graceful, finely crafted examination of America’s racial, cultural, and political identity. Perry always delivers.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” — Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
“A rich and imaginative tour of a crucial piece of America.” — Publishers Weekly
Praise for Breathe — ////
“Breathe is a parent’s unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children’s right simply to be possible.” — New York Times
“In Breathe, Perry offers a lyrical meditation that connects a painful, proud history of African American struggle with a clarion call for present-day action to protect, defend, and celebrate the promise of the next generation.” — Stacey Abrams, founder and chair of Fair Fight Action, Inc.
“Breathe: A Letter to My Sons is deeply cathartic and resonant for parents attempting to raise their children with intention and integrity. Imani Perry shows deep compassion for both parents and children while incisively underlining the realities of raising Black boys in a country that will inherently betray them. It is a book filled with love and insight for difficult times.” — Tarana Burke
Praise for Looking for Lorraine — ////
“A masterly syntheses of research and analysis.” — New York Times Book Review
“Looking for Lorraine is phenomenal. I didn’t know how hungry I was for this intimate portrait until now. It feels as though Ms. Hansberry has walked into my living room and sat down beside me. What an honor and joy to read this. The writing is whip-smart, yet lovely and clear-eyed. What gifts this book, Ms. Perry, and Lorraine Hansberry are to the world.” — Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and National Book Award Winner for Brown Girl Dreaming
“This is one of those books you need to read. Lorraine Hansberry was so dear, so gifted, so black, so singular in so many ways, that to miss the story of her life is to miss a huge part of ours. She left us way too soon, and yet the gift of her presence, so briefly among us, is still felt in the art she left behind. But not only in the art, but in the life. A life at last made comprehensible by this loving, attentive, thoughtful book.” — Alice Walker
Oprah Daily
Provocative, perspective-shifting…. Rendered in exquisite detail…. In this vibrant, revelatory book, Perry proves herself to be a radiant storyteller…like Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Nina Simone before her.
////
Praise for Breathe
Stacey Abrams
In Breathe, Perry offers a lyrical meditation that connects a painful, proud history of African American struggle with a clarion call for present-day action to protect, defend, and celebrate the promise of the next generation.
Tarana Burke
“Breathe: A Letter to My Sons is deeply cathartic and resonant for parents attempting to raise their children with intention and integrity. Imani Perry shows deep compassion for both parents and children while incisively underlining the realities of raising Black boys in a country that will inherently betray them. It is a book filled with love and insight for difficult times.
Garden & Gun
Breathtaking…. Extraordinary…. In the realm of Southern letters it has no real antecedent. It is that fresh, that vital, that intellectually supercharged, that incandescent.
Literary Hub
"Perry’s seamlessly crafted work is a tour-de-force reckoning."
Kiese Laymon
South to America marks time like Beloved did. Similarly, we will talk not solely of books about the south, but books generally as before or after South to America. I have known and loved the South for four decades and Imani Perry has shown me that there is so much more in our region’s fleshy folds to know, explore and love. It is simply the most finely crafted and rigorously conceived book about our region, and nation, I have ever read.
Vulture
Perry is deft and disciplined, her efforts to situate the beauty, oddity, and terror that mark southern life are critical and compelling. As a travel writer, she embraces detours with an eye toward discovery…. Perry asks what it means to be tied to a ‘land of big dreams and bigger lies’ when one is committed to the pursuit of a truth that bursts the nation at its seams.
Natasha Trethewey
In the tradition of native daughters and sons returning home and cataloging the journey, Imani Perry undertakes an exploration of and meditation on the many Souths that make up the American southland. Part pilgrimage, part elegy and clarion call, South to America is wide-ranging, associative and seamlessly woven—an ambitious sweep of history, culture, language. Perry’s intellect is capacious. Moving deftly between registers, she proves to be an insightful and compelling guide."
Isabel Wilkerson
An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.”
Jon Meacham
"Engaging, accomplished, and illuminating, Imani Perry is a Renaissance threat. Gifted in scholarship and fluid in her expression of complex ideas, she is already one of the nation's great public intellectuals and is poised in the coming years to rise even farther. It is given to few people to scale the peaks of the academy and of the public square, but Dr. Perry is one of those precious few. She's the best of best right now."
New Yorker
"This history of the American South examines its subject from both personal and sociopolitical perspectives... [Perry] draws connections between the past and contemporary experience."
Booklist (starred review)
[A] saturated, gorgeously written, and keenly revelatory travelogue...Perry's southern tour is intimate and encompassing, finely laced and steely, affecting and transformative.”
NPR's Fresh Air
[Perry] focuses on a place and reflects on its distinctive relationship to the region’s history of slavery and racism, drawing on her own extensive knowledge of literature, music, art, and folklore, as well as her own family history.”
Alice Walker
This is one of those books you need to read. Lorraine Hansberry was so dear, so gifted, so black, so singular in so many ways, that to miss the story of her life is to miss a huge part of ours. She left us way too soon, and yet the gift of her presence, so briefly among us, is still felt in the art she left behind. But not only in the art, but in the life. A life at last made comprehensible by this loving, attentive, thoughtful book.
|Los Angeles Times
"[Perry] tells rich stories of place while ignoring the borders dividing disciplines and genres, weaving personal experiences with deep history, economics and cultural critique."
Washington Post
"Perry has a knack for the simple observation that showcases the contradictions Americans endure or ignore."
Tayari Jones
Any attempt to classify this ambitious work, which straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing—well, that’s a fool’s errand and only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project…. An essential meditation on the South, its relationship to American culture—even Americanness itself…. This work—and I use the term for both Perry’s labor and its fruit — is determined to provoke a return to the other legacy of the South, the ever-urgent struggle toward freedom.
Time
"In South to America, Perry shows readers that there is no one archetype of the American South, as she considers everything from immigrant communities to the legacy of slavery to her own ancestral roots."
New York Times Book Review
A masterly syntheses of research and analysis.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Engrossing…. [Perry] cannily frames her investigation as a travelogue, moving from Appalachia to the Upper South to the Deep South to outliers like Florida and Cuba…. The book’s pleasures are many…. Her vignettes spark off the page…. An immersive read.
Los Angeles Times
"[Perry] tells rich stories of place while ignoring the borders dividing disciplines and genres, weaving personal experiences with deep history, economics and cultural critique."
New Yorker
"This history of the American South examines its subject from both personal and sociopolitical perspectives... [Perry] draws connections between the past and contemporary experience."
New York Times
“Breathe is a parent’s unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children’s right simply to be possible.”
Jacqueline Woodson
Looking for Lorraine is phenomenal. I didn’t know how hungry I was for this intimate portrait until now. It feels as though Ms. Hansberry has walked into my living room and sat down beside me. What an honor and joy to read this. The writing is whip-smart, yet lovely and clear-eyed. What gifts this book, Ms. Perry, and Lorraine Hansberry are to the world.
Time
"In South to America, Perry shows readers that there is no one archetype of the American South, as she considers everything from immigrant communities to the legacy of slavery to her own ancestral roots."
Library Journal - Audio
06/01/2022
PEN America prize winner Perry (African American studies, Princeton Univ.; Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry) narrates her book that combines memoir, history, and travel narrative as she winds her way through the American South. Her stated goal is to examine the South as both a series of micro-environments shaped by local history and geography and as a macrocosm for the often-fraught history and reality of the United States as a whole. It's a tall order, and one whose success as an audio production depends on listeners' willingness to wander with Perry on a lengthy journey that takes her close to her own roots in Alabama, as well as many places she's rarely or never been before. Perry is soft-spoken and deliberate in her pacing, which allows listeners to fully explore the topic. Those who enjoy an immersive and unhurried nonfiction experience will be rewarded by this examination of how we often blend the personal, the historical, and the political. VERDICT Recommended for listeners who appreciate the works of Isabel Wilkerson and Morgan Jerkins.—Natalie Marshall
Library Journal
12/01/2021
Award-winning historian Perry (African American studies, Princeton Univ.; Looking for Lorraine) takes readers on a road trip through the South, arguing that its history is fundamental to understanding the United States as a whole. As a native Alabaman and a professor of African American studies, Perry blends stories about her own life, family, and friends with the histories, literature, and culture of 18 cities and regions in the South, mostly focusing on Black history but also touching on issues of immigration, the environment, and pop culture. She starts in the "Upper South," exploring colonial history in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC, then covers the "Solidified South" of Alabama, North Carolina, Nashville, and Memphis, and finally the "Water People" of the coasts including Savannah, Florida, New Orleans, and the Bahamas. The chapters about cities where Perry has a strong connection (e.g., Birmingham, where she spent her early childhood) are moving, but others can be hard to follow, when the hodgepodge of facts and stories don't seem to be leading to a specific point about that place. VERDICT Recommended for readers of travelogues and African American and Southern history, as long as they like a meandering style.—Kate Stewart, Arizona State Museum
FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
In this intricate, insightful, and deeply moving work of nonfiction, author/narrator Imani Perry meanders through the South, from New Orleans and DC to the Georgia coast and the West Virginia hills. With a blend of history and personal stories, she explores the South—its culture, language, geography, food, politics—and the crucial role it has played in American history and mythology. Her musical narration is as beautifully assured as her prose, full of the rhythm and cadences of her native Alabama. Though much of the audiobook is a reckoning with racism and white supremacy, it is also a gorgeous, complicated love letter—love you can hear in every sentence Perry speaks. Overflowing with urgent stories and narrated with so much passion and grace, this is a must-listen. L.S. 2022 National Book Award Winner © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-10-26
Travels through fraught landscapes in the American South.
Perry, professor of African American studies at Princeton, melds memoir, travel narrative, and history in an intimate, penetrating journey through the South, from the Mason-Dixon Line to Florida, West Virginia, and the Bahamas. “Paying attention to the South,” she asserts, “allows us to understand much more about our nation, and about how our people, land, and commerce work in relation to one another, often cruelly, and about how our tastes and ways flow from our habits.” At Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, she met a Confederate reenactor—playacting she derides. Yet she found him endearing, empathizing with his yearning “to live inside history, to know its nooks and crannies, to imagine the everyday.” A native Alabaman, Perry is the daughter of civil rights activists, a White Jewish father who left the North to teach at a historically Black college and a Black mother whose family had migrated to Birmingham. Although the author has lived in Cambridge, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, to her, home is “deep” within the “red earth” of Alabama. She reflects on her own experiences of racism as a biracial woman and explores ways that Blacks have adapted historically, and she engagingly chronicles her visits to communities that embody the term “broken oasis,” efforts of Black Americans to embrace the nation’s politics and culture while remaining independent. They were destroyed, she notes, “by the habits of White Supremacy.” In progressive cities and rural towns, the author finds plenty of evidence of “the plantation South, with its Black vernacular, its insurgency, and also its brutal masculinity, its worship of Whiteness, its expulsion and its massacres, its self-defeating stinginess and unapologetic pride”—in short, the essence of America. The South, she notes, is “conservative in the sense of conservation. But what that means is not in fact easily described in political terms.”
A graceful, finely crafted examination of America’s racial, cultural, and political identity. Perry always delivers.
