Reviews
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons is deeply cathartic and resonant for parents attempting to raise their children with intention and integrity. Imani Perry shows deep compassion for both parents and children while incisively underlining the realities of raising Black boys in a country that will inherently betray them. It is a book filled with love and insight for difficult times., Engaging, accomplished, and illuminating, Imani Perry is a Renaissance threat. Gifted in scholarship and fluid in her expression of complex ideas, she is already one of the nation's great public intellectuals and is poised in the coming years to rise even farther. It is given to few people to scale the peaks of the academy and of the public square, but Dr. Perry is one of those precious few. She's the best of best right now., An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South--and thus of America--by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration., [Perry] melds memoir, travel narrative, and history in an intimate, penetrating journey through the South.... A graceful, finely crafted examination of America's racial, cultural, and political identity. Perry always delivers., This is one of those books you need to read. Lorraine Hansberry was so dear, so gifted, so black, so singular in so many ways, that to miss the story of her life is to miss a huge part of ours. She left us way too soon, and yet the gift of her presence, so briefly among us, is still felt in the art she left behind. But not only in the art, but in the life. A life at last made comprehensible by this loving, attentive, thoughtful book., Any attempt to classify this ambitious work, which straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing--well, that's a fool's errand and only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project.... An essential meditation on the South, its relationship to American culture--even Americanness itself.... This work--and I use the term for both Perry's labor and its fruit -- is determined to provoke a return to the other legacy of the South, the ever-urgent struggle toward freedom., [Perry] tells rich stories of place while ignoring the borders dividing disciplines and genres, weaving personal experiences with deep history, economics and cultural critique., South to America marks time like Beloved did. Similarly, we will talk not solely of books about the south, but books generally as before or after South to America. I have known and loved the South for four decades and Imani Perry has shown me that there is so much more in our region's fleshy folds to know, explore and love. It is simply the most finely crafted and rigorously conceived book about our region, and nation, I have ever read., Breathe is a parent's unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children's right simply to be possible., [A] saturated, gorgeously written, and keenly revelatory travelogue...Perry's southern tour is intimate and encompassing, finely laced and steely, affecting and transformative., In Breathe, Perry offers a lyrical meditation that connects a painful, proud history of African American struggle with a clarion call for present-day action to protect, defend, and celebrate the promise of the next generation., [Perry] focuses on a place and reflects on its distinctive relationship to the region's history of slavery and racism, drawing on her own extensive knowledge of literature, music, art, and folklore, as well as her own family history., This history of the American South examines its subject from both personal and sociopolitical perspectives... [Perry] draws connections between the past and contemporary experience., In the tradition of native daughters and sons returning home and cataloging the journey, Imani Perry undertakes an exploration of and meditation on the many Souths that make up the American southland. Part pilgrimage, part elegy and clarion call, South to America is wide-ranging, associative and seamlessly woven--an ambitious sweep of history, culture, language. Perry's intellect is capacious. Moving deftly between registers, she proves to be an insightful and compelling guide., Breathe is what is says it is, a letter from a mother to her sons, but it is more than that. It's a meditation on child-rearing, world-building, fire-starting, and peace-building. Imani Perry combines rigor and heart, and the result is a magic mirror showing us who we are, how we got here, and who we may become., Looking for Lorraine is phenomenal. I didn't know how hungry I was for this intimate portrait until now. It feels as though Ms. Hansberry has walked into my living room and sat down beside me. What an honor and joy to read this. The writing is whip-smart, yet lovely and clear-eyed. What gifts this book, Ms. Perry, and Lorraine Hansberry are to the world.
