Black in Blues Review

By Celeste Daniels

TW: Racism, slavery

Hello, audacious readers!

As the time springs forward and our leaders try to set the world on fire, we are taking some refuge in our bookshelves while staying aware of reality. For February, we explored the connection between the color blue and the Black diaspora in Black in Blues by Imani Perry.

Blue has walked hand-in-hand with Black people and our history for centuries, from the Indigo dye produced within Africa to the blue sea that separated us from our ancestral home to blue painted houses scattered throughout the American South to ward off evil spirits to the creation of blues music. And yet, it is easily overlooked for colors like red, black, white, gold, and green. After all, what stories could blue tell that these other colors didn’t? According to Perry, quite a few.

In this book, she explores how blue shows up in Black homes, art, and people. Through this thoughtful meditation, she explores how the color captures depths of our pain, the variety of our existence, and the weight of our hopes.

If you find yourself tuning out Black history because the topics all sound familiar—with the same cycle of pain, defiance, and tragedy—this book is for you. I wouldn’t call it a history book in the traditonal sense with bendless stats and numbers, attaching a few key facts to names you’ve heard through the years. Instead, it walks you through history as a story, almost mimicking a short story collection with the variety of topics it covers.

And for such a short book, ending under 250 pages, it covers a lot. We start from when Europeans first became interested in Africa in the late 1400’s all the way to 2023 when Perry herself went to a friend’s art exhibition at the National Mall in Washington D.C. Even rarer, she doesn’t just explore Black history in America. She brings us along to explore the history of Haiti, Liberia, Brazil, Congo and more.

Reading this book, I felt like a friend introducing me to someone that I felt I should already know but haven’t met yet. This is due to Perry’s emphasis of the emotional perspective of her subjects. For example, in the chapter “Blue-Eyed Negroes”, we get the words of W. E. B. Du Bois speaking about the recent loss of his son, a far cry from what I’ve read about him in the past. Instead of the upright, distinguished community leader I’m used to, in the passage he’s thoughtful, grief-stricken father, introducing him as a human first instead of an icon. She does the same for familiar figures like George Washington Carver, Whitney Houston, Zora Neale Hurston, and plenty of people we don’t know that have added to Black history all the same.

Now, don’t be fooled: this was not an easy text for me to read by any measure. The harsh realities of our history and human nature are still there. Not everyone presented—Black or otherwise—is a hero. Not every story ends on a triumphant note or even with a little hope. Some stories truly made me wonder if it’s foolish to hope for better.

Yet, by the time I reached the end, I settled back into a truth that most Black Americans believe in, perhaps even foolishly: We’ll be alright. It’ll suck for a while but giving up on us, our history, and especially our future is probably the worst thing we can do. After all, we’ve survived this long. Why not defy the odds a little longer?

I hope you enjoyed Black in Blues! Stay tuned for our March read. Also, make sure to check out the Audacity Book Club merch and get your “Not ya mama’s book club” hats today and keep an eye out for the “Not ya mama’s book club” sweatshirts, coming later this year.

As always, don’t forget to read audaciously!