Imani Perry traces blue through Black American life, starting with her grandmother's room
The American writer and professor spoke about Black in Blues on Bookends with Mattea Roach
Imani Perry's latest book, Black in Blues, is an evocative exploration of what the colour can tell us about being Black in the United States today — and the extraordinary human capacity to find beauty in the face of devastation.
"She draws on history, mythology, music and more, to offer surprising revelations about what it means to be Black in the United States today … and what blue has to do with it," said Mattea Roach in the introduction to their interview on Bookends.
Perry is an American author, scholar and professor at Harvard University. She's written several other nonfiction books including South to America which won the National Book Award in 2022.
Perry joined Roach to discuss her book Black in Blues and how her grandmother's room was her entry point into her study of the colour.
Mattea Roach: Your new book begins in your grandmother's bedroom in this small house in Birmingham, Alabama. Can you describe that room for us?
Imani Perry: It's one of the most precious places that I have ever been in my life. So my grandmother converted the dining room into her bedroom and it was at the centre of the house.
There was a fireplace, not in use, painted what to me was a pale slate blue, blue bedding, bluebirds on the wall, blue drapes and the like.
I had this experience with my cousin's young son, Ian, when he was quite small. I knew he loved blue the way I do. I asked him what his favourite colour was: blue. And he said that one — he pointed up on the ceiling, there was a tile missing from when the ceiling had been dropped. Through the space that was left, you could see the original colour blue of the room. It was a sky blue. It was much more brilliant. It was beautiful.
It was, for me, a sign that blue was going to be a portal of sorts. This place was a home place, that was the most comforting place, a place I loved to sleep in the bed with my grandmother. But it also was an entry point to thinking about this longer journey.
MR: Why do you think your grandmother, in particular, was so drawn to blue?
IP: Oh, there's so many reasons. Part of it, and I speculate, is that there's this parade of gorgeous blue wildflowers through the state of Alabama.
There's a way that the colour was used by women like her and and then some who are quite well known, like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer and Coretta Scott King, for important occasions. That it has a kind of elegance and restraint in certain shades, but it still has that delicacy and tenderness.
I talk about blue as a contrapuntal colour, meaning that it can mean two things at once or multiple things at once that even seem contradictory. It's a colour that is hot as well as cold. It's a colour that is lush.
It has a kind of elegance and restraint in certain shades, but it still has that delicacy and tenderness.- Imani Perry
We think about the sky and the seas, but there's also Oxford blues. It excites the imagination and it's beautiful.
One of the things that we underestimate and that I wanted to get to in this book is how much beauty was essential in the history of Black Americans, beauty in the face of terror or the creation of beauty at the very site of wounding.
I don't even know actually if it was her favourite colour, but I'm so grateful that she encased us in it.
MR: Now that this book is out in the world, do you feel like the process of writing it has shaped your own relationship to Blackness and the colour blue? Are you more aware of these connections in your day-to-day?
IP: I have these moments if I'm rereading a classic novel or watching a classic film and I didn't remember that there was blue and what kind of symbolism it had. It shows up.
But here is where it has impacted me most: I think a lot about collaging and quilting as part of the aesthetic, in particular a Black southern aesthetic, putting pieces together from fragments and threads and trying to put them together in a way that creates a beautiful whole.
I feel more aware of that as a process of living the curated life. That we make decisions about what we're pulling from and how we're trying to create in relation with each other on a daily basis. And that it's really important to be deliberate about that.
I want us to be very deliberate in this time, in this moment of history, about what we do, how we put things together, how we decide to tell stories.- Imani Perry
Blue is the core colour in southern quilts. In a sense, blue doesn't have to be your colour for that lesson to be understood and felt. I hope some of that comes through in the book.
I want us to be very deliberate in this time, in this moment of history, about what we do, how we put things together, how we decide to tell stories and how we do that in community but also in the creation of ourselves.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.
