Imani Perry at The Brattle Theatre
When:
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2025 6:00p -
8:00p
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2025 6:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Admission:
$38
Hosted by:
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/imani-perry-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1095310616539?aff=oddtdtcreator
Harvard Book Store welcomes Imani Perry—National Book Award–winning author of South to America and 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—for a discussion of her new book Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, a beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture. She will be joined in conversation by Cristela Guerra—a senior arts and culture reporter for WBUR and 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Ticketing
Tickets include admission for one and one hardcover copy of Black in Blues pre-signed by the author.
About Black in Blues
A surprising, beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry
Throughout history, Black life has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways, from the hopefulness of a blue sky to the deep melancholy of 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 from art and history: the dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the sixteenth century; 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 work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers.
Bios
Imani Perry is the National Book Award-winning author of South to America, as well as eight 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.
Cristela Guerra is a senior arts and culture reporter for WBUR, a queer Panamanian journalist of color, and a moderator who facilitates and leads conversations around race, identity, and equity. Before working in public radio, she was a newspaper journalist for more than a decade, working at The Boston Globe and The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. She was a 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Her studies examined stories from the diaspora, including those of her own Panamanian heritage, the reasons that compel people to migrate and how those individuals build community and maintain connections to their cultural identity. Her work received a regional and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2014 and most recently received another regional Edward R. Murrow in 2023 as part of “Continuing Coverage” for her work at the U.S.-Mexico border on the journey of Venezuelan migrants. She was chosen as a 2019 Latina Leader by Amplify Latinx and selected by YW Boston to be inducted into its 2023 Academy of Women Achievers and receive the organization’s Sylvia Ferrell-Jones Award. They are the vice-president of the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and vice-chair of the board at RAW Art Works in Lynn.
