by Imani Perry
Ecco Press
1/27/2026, paperback
SKU: 9780062977410
A "vast, multifaceted and enchanting" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture, from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, "the most important interpreter of Black life in our time" (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.)
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.
Reviews:
"In [Perry's] writing, the familiar transforms into the unfamiliar, or the supposedly quotidian gains new depth, and because she commits to the reshaping of the familiar, her work insists upon you, the reader, joining in on that commitment. This strength is at its height in Black in Blues, an exploration not necessarily of the color blue itself, but the color blue as it appears in concert and contrast with black (black people, black history, the color black)....Black in Blues....is the best Perry has ever been, for me, on a sentence level." - Hanif Abdurraqib, 4Columns
"With Black in Blues, Imani Perry establishes herself as the most important interpreter of Black life in our time. With intellectual skill, an artist's eye, and the beauty of her pen, she powerfully tells the story of our people through the color blue. This is an extraordinary book." - Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again and We Are the Leaders
"Imani Perry's work is brilliant and lyrical as ever! How clearly she assesses the history of Black and Blue, knitting them together with language both precise and haunting. This book is a great gift, in that it allowed me to see the world anew with Perry's clear-eyed insight. How Perry allows me to understand my Blue better, too!" - Jesmyn Ward, author of Let Us Descend and Sing, Unburied, Sing
About the Author:
Imani Perry is the National Book Award-winning author of South to America, as well as seven 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.