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Speaking Black Life Across Generations: LitHub Interviews ‘Breathe’ Author Imani Perry

Speaking Black Life Across Generations: LitHub Interviews ‘Breathe’ Author Imani Perry

Perry
Photo via Twitter

Imani Perry is not only an author, but she is a Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University.

Perry, whose writings and teaching have focused on race and African-American culture, has written several books. Among her published books are: “More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States”; “Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem,” which focused on the cultural history of the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”; her biography of Lorraine Hansberry, “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant Life of Lorraine Hansberry”; and on the subject of patriarchy she penned “Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation.” 

Her latest book, “Breathe,” is, in essence, a mother’s letter to her two sons, Freeman and Issa, on what it will be like to grow up Black and male in America. 

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Time recently ran an excerpt of “Breathe,” and it illustrates the depth of Perry’s insight on America.

“You were both little bits when President Obama was elected. That night was jubilant. We celebrated with friends, then, on the ride home, black people cheered and danced in the streets. It reminded me of the night when Harold Washington won as mayor of Chicago, and strangers hugged my father and me. Such joy. It was a palate cleanser, for a fragment of a moment. A season in which pundits speculated we might be post-racial, in which scholars speculated that Black children would be less wounded; they called it a turning point, a point of no return. When Obama won, for a time Black tongues were scraped of bitterness and bile. Then the aftertaste came back like an earthquake,” she wrote.

In an interview with Literary Hub, Perry explained “Breathe.”

“The idea of trying to speak Black life across generations and places, as an act of love without sentimentalism and with instruction, devotion, care, and even anger, has always been compelling to me,” she said. “Peoples lives are never static even as wisdom persists, and racism, like other -isms, is a creative enterprise. So, we try to navigate this complicated shapeshifting beast and stay whole. And we try to teach our young how to do it, as it changes. It’s difficult and yet imperative. So yeah, I was trying to step into that tradition. But I also was very aware that the particulars of my life as post-freedom movement Black woman intellectual would add a particular valence that I hope readers will find useful or compelling.”

And on Black life, particularly Black middle-class life, Perry said: “We are always slipping down the economic ladder cause the forces are powerful. That said, the wrecking ball that most of our folks live with is unrelenting. Eviction, prison, environmental racism, food insecurity, homelessness — these are frequencies in Black life. And whether or not we intimately experience them, they are ours to grieve over and contend with. Simply put, I’m not raising my sons to set themselves apart from other Black people because of an insecure privilege. I’m raising Black people who understand who and whose they are. That’s a value I hold dearly.”