2020 Chautauqua Prize Finalist2020 NAACP Image Award Nominee – Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)Best-of Lists: Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews) · 25 Can’t-Miss Books of 2019 (The Undefeated) Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw … parent our children in a persistently unjust world.
Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love—finding beauty and possibility in life—and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.
Perry draws upon the ideas of figures such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her own life and from encounters in places as varied as the West Side of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools.
With original art for the cover by Ekua Holmes, Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience.
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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.
There are moments when a piece of writing is so honest, so personal, that it crawls into us… Breathe is that. Perry gives us a look into what it means to love her children — her Black sons — in a world that may not. What it means to arm them with information, history, culture, spirit, pride, and joy. What it means to celebrate with them the vastness of their lineage and the tight network of community, which affords them an impenetrable freedom to be. To just… be. And as Perry gives this to her sons — her family — with such candor and respect, I couldn’t help but hear my own mother speaking her truth, our truth, to me.
Before reading Breathe, I knew that Imani Perry was the most important cultural worker in my professional life. But I had no idea that Imani Perry, or any writer in this country, could pull off what she pulls off in Breathe. More than any book I’ve read in the last twenty years, Breathe boldly reminds us that artful intentionality is not nearly as important as artful effectiveness, and artful effectiveness is shaped by the love a writer has for her intended audience. Somehow, Perry manages to mourn, celebrate, theorize, and welcome us into the space between, and around, this Black mother and her Black sons. Though the language here is different from all of Perry’s other work, the attentiveness to sustained analysis is even more apparent. One feels that Perry had to write her other five books to write this one, the smallest and ironically the most rigorous, personal, and soulful of all of her genius work. Breathe is the first book I’ve ever needed to read out loud with my mother.
Breathe is a masterpiece. With an approach that is at once vulnerable and brave, scholarly and artistic, critical and hopeful, Imani Perry has written the book that we desperately need. Breathe arms us with the wisdom, courage, and hope necessary to parent Black children within a White supremacist world. Breathe not only demonstrates Perry’s deep love of her sons but also her profound and abiding faith in the rich traditions, ambitious freedom dreams, and boundless possibilities of Black people. This is an offering of profound beauty and brilliance that marks Imani Perry’s emergence as the leading writer and thinker of this generation.
Beautifully written with brilliant insights that leap off the page, Breathe announces the arrival of Imani Perry as a literary force. With each sentence, Perry reveals her mastery of the genre of the essay and her vast knowledge of the tradition of African American letters. From that deep well, she offers her wisdom not only to her sons but for all of us. This is a must-read — especially in these dark times.