Imani Perry is a highly accomplished scholar and author, currently serving as 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. She has previously held positions at Princeton University, including as the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies. Perry 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.
Perry has made significant contributions to the field of African American studies, with a focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination. Her work explores the ways in which Black communities have resisted and responded to social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. She is the author of several influential books, including "Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry," which received the Pen Bograd-Weld Award for Biography, the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, and the Shilts-Grahn Award for nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle.
Perry's scholarship also touches on issues of gender and liberation, as well as contemporary practices of racial inequality. Her book "Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation" is a work of critical theory that examines the formation of modern patriarchy and its evolution over time. Meanwhile, "More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States" offers an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that persist in spite of formal declarations of racial equality.
In addition to her academic work, Perry is also an accomplished author of creative nonfiction. Her book "Breathe: A Letter to My Sons" was a finalist for the 2020 Chautauqua Prize and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. She has also published widely on topics ranging from racial inequality to hip-hop, and has been active across various media. Perry's work has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades, including the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction for her book "South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation" and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.
Non-Fiction Books
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Title
Year
Goodreads
Amazon
1
Prophets of the Hood
2004
2
More Beautiful and More Terrible
2011
3
May We Forever Stand
2018
4
Vexy Thing
2018
5
Looking for Lorraine
2018
6
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
2019
7
South to America
2022
John Hope Franklin Books
#
Title
Year
Goodreads
Amazon
1
The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South
1999
2
Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945
2003
3
Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta
2003
4
Journey of Hope
2004
5
Root and Branch
2005
6
The Black Arts Movement
2006
7
North Carolina Slave Narratives
2006
8
A Little Taste of Freedom
2006
9
Battling the Plantation Mentality
2007
10
An African Republic
2007
11
A Faithful Account of the Race
2009
12
Joining Places
2009
13
Proudly We Can Be Africans
2009
14
A Movement Without Marches
2009
15
Emancipation's Diaspora
2009
16
African Cherokees in Indian Territory
2009
17
Examining Tuskegee
2009
18
Upbuilding Black Durham
2009
19
Self-Taught
2009
20
All Bound Up Together
2009
21
First Fruits of Freedom
2010
22
David Ruggles
2010
23
Right to Ride
2010
24
Torchbearers of Democracy
2010
25
Living for the City
2010
26
Way Up North in Louisville
2010
27
North of the Color Line
2010
28
The African American Roots of Modernism
2011
29
Left of the Color Line
2012
30
War! What Is It Good For?
2012
31
Grassroots Garveyism
2012
32
Death Blow to Jim Crow
2012
33
Crossroads at Clarksdale
2012
34
Help Me to Find My People
2012
35
Doctoring Freedom
2012
36
American Africans in Ghana
2012
37
Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens
2013
38
From the Bullet to the Ballot
2013
39
W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk
2013
40
Geographies of Liberation
2014
41
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women
2015
42
Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis
2016
43
A Chance for Change
2016
44
Colored Travelers
2016
45
Making Gullah
2017
46
Congo Love Song
2017
47
Game of Privilege
2017
48
The Promise of Patriarchy
2017
49
Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South
2018
50
May We Forever Stand
2018
51
Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s
2019
52
Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal
2020
53
Visualizing Equality
2020
54
Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom
2020
55
Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century