Imani Perry

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Jazz Studies. She is the author of 7 books. The most recent is instant New York Times bestseller South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (HarperCollins, 2022), More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (NYU Press, 2011), Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (2018), Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (Duke University Press 2018), and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem (2019). Her most recent book is: Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019). Perry is a scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, and an author of creative nonfiction. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies. Her writing and scholarship primarily focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political and legal realities of domination in the West. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. Perry’s forthcoming book under contract with ECCO Press is a narrative journey through the South, arguing that it is the nation’s heartland for better and worse. Future planned projects include an examination of African American theories of law and justice, and a meditation on the color blue in Black life.