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 16 th 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. “Ultimately, Black in Blues is an encyclopedia, an intentional threading of the composite nature of blue and Black. Through her study, Perry demonstrates that the creation, adoration, and use of blue in global Blackness isn’t accidental. It’s a strategy, a language, a point of departure for us and by us.” - Guardian “This prismatic volume finds the National Book Award-winning Princeton professor meditating on skin color and the indigo trade, Louis Armstrong’s music and Toni Morrison’s writing, in short, lyrical chapters.” - New York Times “Suggestion is the modus operandi of this brilliant book. The alternative – conclusions that operate as a kind of curfew on ideas – feels immeasurably worse. That’s not the case here: the blue notes and bones sing on even after closing the book.” - Frieze “[Perry] exemplifies the best of interdisciplinary analysis and storytelling, weaving together the threads of history and culture to point out common threads and trends that people may never have noticed otherwise. As a historian, she writes in a conversational tone about the atrocities that are often left out of high school textbooks. As a cultural critic, she’s insightful and artfully intentional about the details she draws readers to.” - The Advocate “Perry writes to harness a complex story of shifting blues, offering us an open-ended gift.” - Chloe Bass, Hyperallergic “Perry asks us to see Black people’s relationship to the color blue in its spiritual and material specialness, and though blue carries immense tragedy inside of it, neither black nor blue is wholly defined by the cruelty that links them. Like a blues song, the beauty is found when you tune into its complex frequencies on the backbeat.” - New Republic “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 “Revelatory. . . .[ Black in Blues ] is attuned to the high, the low, and the blue notes that compose Blackness—and we would all do well to listen.” - Omari Weekes, Atlantic “Scholar Imani Perry is a brilliant storyteller and cultural critic. 'Black in Blues' offers a historical analysis of Black identity through the lens of color. She examines how the color blue beautifully reflects the Black lived experience in America.” - Glory Edim, TODAY.com “One of those books that slips the boundaries . . . . ‘Ask the right questions,’ [Perry] insists, ‘and you’ll move toward virtue and truth.’ Words to live by, especially in a nation where a large swatch of the population seems intent on disavowing the better angels of our nature.” - Los Angeles Times “As Imani Perry illuminates in a new book that swirls and flicks like an actual marble, [blue is] inextricable from the Black race. . . . Reading Black in Blues is like putting