Black in Blues by Imani Perry

This is such an unusual way to approach race and racism, and I would be even more surprised than I am if I hadn't read her last book. She won the 2022 National Book Award for South to America, in which she meditates on the history of racism in the South as she is traveling through the South as a black woman in 21st century America, and how it reveals the very character of the nation. If you haven't read that, I recommend it. This book, which meditates on the color blue and what it means to black people, is breath taking. It is a series of stories, and they span from the days of colonialism right up to the present, highlighting the work of contemporary artists like vanessa german, Lorna Simpson and Firelei Báez, who all use blue dye and blue objects in their work. And, of course, there is a discussion of the blues, as both a musical genre and an ineffable sound that resurfaces again and again in Black music. She weaves this tapestry of Black life across five centuries, moving seamlessly among historical records and the diaries of white explorers to enslaved peoples’ testimonies, close readings of African American fiction and vignettes from he own family's relationship with the color. The sheer breadth and depth of this mosaic telling speaks to the power of Perry’s craft as both scholar and storyteller, illustrating the beauty of the very culture about which she writes. The near closing line sticks with me: "May we haunt the past to change the present and claim the future."