Ep. 204 A Journey South with Imani Perry

Written By Megan Caballero

Imani Perry is the author of seven books including her latest, the New York Times bestselling, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation. She is an American interdisciplinary scholar of race, law, literature, and African-American culture, and the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Imani shares with us today about her writing process, inspirations, and sweet tooth.

The Stacks Book Club selection for March is A Mercy by Toni Morrison. We will discuss the book on March 30th with Imani Perry.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and we are joined today by a woman that I admire. So very deeply Imani Perry. Imani Perry is the author of seven books including Breathe: a letter to my son, which was a past Stax book club pick, and her latest book south to America a journey below the Mason Dixon Line to understand the soul of a nation. This book is phenomenal. She is an American interdisciplinary scholar of race, law, literature and African American culture. And she is currently the Hughes Rogers professor of African American studies at Princeton University. And today we talk about going back to the south to write her latest book, the seduction of Beauty and the historical importance of a sweet tooth. IMANI will be back with us at the end of the month to discuss A Mercy by Toni Morrison. Okay, now it’s time for my conversation with the Imani Perry.

Alright everybody, I am very thrilled. Today I am joined by one of my favorite writers and thinkers, author, lawyer, historian Professor all around genius person and notably a literary mother, which is important as well. Imani Perry, welcome to the Stacks.

Imani Perry 2:08
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to talk to you.

Traci Thomas 2:12
I’m so happy to have you. I think you are the first author I’ve ever had on the show after we’ve done their book for book club.

Imani Perry 2:20
Oh, wow. Oh, that’s cool.

Traci Thomas 2:22
Yeah, I’ve had a few people before. And then we chose the book. But we did breathe like a year and a half ago. We did it summer 2020. So almost two years ago. So thank you so much for that.

Imani Perry 2:33
I really appreciated you know, your support and encouragement and all the wonderful things that you said about it.

Traci Thomas 2:38
So thank you, everyone, you can go back and listen, I was with KSA. He and I we went in we love we love the book. We love you. But so for people who aren’t familiar with you and your work, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Imani Perry 2:49
Sure, you know that the self description part is always sort of tricky. I mean, I guess the most concise way, I would say who I am, is I am an intellectual, a creative intellectual, a writer of creative nonfiction, as well as scholarship, I study African American culture and literature, but also history and legal history. And I guess the sort of the energy behind everything that I tried to do is to think about how we use the imagination to move us towards something closer like the beloved community and how to be in right relation to each other. And so my job is I’m a professor, my life is I’m a mother, but that’s sort of like the zeitgeist or the soul of of what I’m trying to do here. I love that I love the creative, intellectual part. Because I think, in reading your latest books out to America, I kept thinking about the ways in which you were writing history in a way that it didn’t feel like history, and not that it didn’t feel like history, because it was like, accessible for like, seventh grade readers. But in the way it didn’t feel like history, because you made it feel like it was like so creative how you did it. Like, it was like, Yeah, I don’t even I really struggled. I mean, well, right, it doesn’t. So South America does not fit a pre existing genre, although the I guess there are books that are like it, and the sense of sort of books that move through space and time at the same time and our books of encounter. But it’s not like a sort of, like, it’s not history as a genre in the sense that like, when you write a book, that’s the work of history, which I’ve done before, you know, you’re telling a story, and you’re putting up and it has to have an argument, and you’re corralling your evidence in support of the argument. This is not an argument driven book. It is a kind of witnessing and counter driven book. And it’s a lot of its focus is on how cyclical events that we described as historic are right so we’re living in the repetition of these of these tensions or conflicts, particularly around questions of different

injustice and the like. So, right. So it couldn’t be for me to write the book that this needed to be couldn’t I couldn’t tell it in a traditional history fashion.

Traci Thomas 5:08
Right. Okay, so let me ask you this, because I know you’re a Virgo, right? Leo rising. Okay, great. I’m a Leo fairy. This is why we’re connected a little bit. And I think it’s important that you’re a Virgo, because I need you to explain to me how the hell you wrote this book. Because you’ll go through like, a bazillion places, and you’re pulling on a gazillion threads. And you’re talking about, you know, the colonial times, and you’re talking about civil rights times, you’re talking about the 1920s. You’re talking about reconstruction, you’re talking about yesterday, and you’re talking about the future, and you’re talking about it and all these different places, and the food and the language. And sometimes you’re talking about a really famous person that we’ve all heard of. And sometimes you’re talking about someone we’ve never heard of, and like, how did you pick where to go? And what to write about? And did you start with a list? And then did some places not make the cut? And like, I just have so many questions around the how of this work?

Imani Perry 6:06
I mean, so architecture is really important for me, and architecture, at the level of the book, at the level of the book is sort of three movements. And they’re all shaped by the environment, but also the figures who show up in the landscape, the different parts of the south. But structure is also important at the level of the relationship between the chapter and sentences. So there’s a lot, lot, lot lot that got cut out, right. So if I’m sort of traveling to a place, let’s say Florida, right, so for Florida, I wanted to it was important to understand, Florida is a place that we need to understand in terms of its history of violence, and the site of conquest, because if we tell the story of Florida, we actually push back the beginning date of this American project to the 1500s, rightfully so. And that that was violent conflict. So the first sentence, and it’s also it has a distinct story. But it has a story that in some ways is representative. So the first sentence is Florida is a pistol for a reason, because it’s shaped like a gun, but that captures the Florida, but also a pistol and the biblical sense of a story. Right? So it has this kind of story that is instructive for us broadly. So every, and then the sentence is moved through like that. So even the examples, because, you know, I’m an associative writer, so I’m making associations between things that seem, but that’s a quilting process, right? So it’s, I’m kind of quilting in various examples to illustrate each point. And making sure then throughout the entire body of the text that each point hits at least three times, right. So it’s structural, which required a lot of outlining. And a lot of a lot of killing my darlings is a lot of stuff that I want it to be in the book that just didn’t fit, it just went it went off, it would go off the rails, and I’d be like, it’s too far, you know, to push people to the edge. And then but to still hold them is tricky, right? And you never know if you’re going to hit it right. But there are times when it’s like, yeah, this is too far. Right. Gotta cut that part. So a lot of outlining a lot of restructuring.

Traci Thomas 8:18
And but when you went into certain places, like when you started the project, did you have a list of specific places you want to go like specific cities? And then did you have an idea of what you wanted to talk about in each of those places? Or was your visit kind of the starting point for that?

Imani Perry 8:35
It was back and forth? Okay, it just depends on it. Yes. Are there places? Yeah, well, some places I had an idea, like I knew from the beginning, North Carolina was going to be about religion like that. But other places. And I knew Alabama was going to be a lot about mental health stuff. But other places I didn’t quite know. Or things that moved around like I was going to Knoxville supposed to be about sugar, but then I wound up not going back to Knoxville because of COVID. So the sugar had to go elsewhere. Right. So there’s, but I should also say, like, I tell, there’s a lot that I don’t tell about each place I visit because the chapter has to fit into what I’m trying to do in the chapter. So it’s there’s a lot of pruning, even in talking about the visit itself.

Traci Thomas 9:14
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how your brain works. You’re saying like, you sort of think in that way? How did you, I, this is me not even able to formulate my question. So this will show you how my brain works. I have a lot of difficulty with my brain of like trying to take how my brain works and make it productive for me for the work that I do. Is that something that’s part of your process, where you take sort of your, your thinking that is connected with all the different threads, but you have a practice to make it more structured for writing, or how does that work?

Imani Perry 9:47
I mean, I think it’s both that’s such a good question. That’s hard to answer. I mean, I you know, it’s it is ritual, right. So when you know the practice of writing and the practice of reading Every day, right? I mean, reading is the most is the single most important part of writing to me, right. And so that’s a piece of it, and writing this not necessarily toward a goal, but actually, the discipline of writing I think is really important. But I also think, and I don’t I do believe that you work with how you feel, right? So you don’t try to adopt another person’s practice, you find the practice that that works for, for for you. But there’s also the part that is the urgency of things that you want to say, right, or that you want to put out in the world. And that’s ultimately the biggest driver. Right? And it’s like the how, right, you know, the what? And you know, the why, right? Because that’s the passion, right? The value, but then the how is it as a constant act of experimentation? I guess you sort of like chip away at it every day, right?

Traci Thomas 10:47
That’s all Yeah, no, I love that. Okay, you this is not your first book, this is your seventh published book. It is wondering a little bit about that, because this is your first New York Times bestseller, right? It is. Yeah. And so I mean, you’re brilliant. I think people who read your work know this about you, you’re clearly like very rigorous in the work that you do and your process. And I and I know from what I’ve read that this is not necessarily you know, a better book than your other books. What do you make of this being a New York Times bestseller? Do you make anything of it? Do you think it’s the time do you think it’s like, oh,

Imani Perry 11:21
it’s the structure? It’s been with a big press? Is it? What is the difference between an institution that can and did deeply invest in this? I mean, I, you know, it’s as simple as that. And I really keep, I want to say that, because I think that from my own experience, and for my knees from the outside in, it looks like magic, when something hits the best selling us, as opposed to, there is a month of rollout preparation for this book, right. And then and that’s normal for books that wind up getting a kind of attention every once in a while, a book from a small press hits big, but that’s very unusual. And that usually is it’s the time or there’s some interview that lights if so I’m very grateful. But I also think it’s really important to both note that there is a big difference when you have an institution that is well resourced behind your book, right? And that there are books that live for generations that had very little support behind them, and still will have a vast impact in the long term. And I just want writers to be aware of that.

Traci Thomas 12:32
I think that’s so important, because I know as someone who gets pitched a lot of books regularly, which books have that marketing, Yeti resources put behind them. And I do think that it often translates to, you know, interviews, and all of the things that need a book to make. But also, to be fair, I’m gonna be hard pressed to see if this book isn’t one of the best books of the year. It’s just so good. And it’s so smart. And like, My only fear for this book is that it’s too smart for a lot of people. But it’s just like, it’s like, Oh, this isn’t this isn’t just something you can like, read quick and be like, you have to allocate time with it. And I did listen to some of it on the audiobook. And that’s fantastic. You do all the voices, which I love. Okay, I have some personal questions for me. Yes, these are sort of like advice questions. Number one, and the most important is how did you find your family? I want to find my people so bad. And I only get to my grandparents. My dad was born in 1935. My grandparents were born in 1915. And I just I can’t get I can’t get past it

Imani Perry 13:36
well, so well, it gave a bunch of different sites. I mean, I started with Family Search, because it’s free. That’s the website that’s on by the Mormons. And then after I had done a lot, then I invested in paying for ancestry.com. And I did 23. And me and I’ve done that the DNA testing, which I know is not well advised, but I did it. I found a lot of I found a lot of people that way. Like a lot of people that way. But I think a lot of it is just cross referencing, and also creative spellings. So names are spelled differently, particularly in black folks, you know, in our records, they just from generation to generation is a lot of census records, property records. The good thing about ancestry is that you can also connect to other people’s trees. So sometimes relatives like I found a relative who looks almost exactly like me and someone else’s fit. Like they she had just gone to the mountain mountains of South Carolina and taking pictures from an older relative who neither of us knew, and then found this picture of this woman and my son is like, Take That woman’s picture off the wall because it’s creepy because it looks like you and all kinds of clothes. Love that. Yeah. So, you know, try those those sites. They’re really they’re good and people are friendly. So they talked about

Traci Thomas 14:58
because you found all Little you found all the way back to the 770 Hundreds. Yeah, I was in I was in the car listening to you say that getting mad being like, I got to ask her about this. How does she do it?

Imani Perry 15:09
Let me tell you something. So after someone read the book, this is just a couple of weeks ago and said, I have actually found more information about that ancestor of yours through the Maryland Historical Society. So that’s also the more you talk about it. Like there’s other people who are Yeah,

Traci Thomas 15:25
yeah. Oh, my gosh, so cool. Okay, another personal question for me. And people who listen to the show will know this, one of my favorite books, and actually, probably my favorite movie is Gone With the Wind, which I know, is highly problematic. And I get that. I want to talk about that kind of art, though, for a second. Because I want to know, like, can we like it? And how can we reckon with what the art is and the problems that are held there? Without just being like, this is a bad thing, and we should get rid of it? Right?

Imani Perry 15:55
That’s such a good question. I mean, I am not on the side. It’s funny, I had an interview the other day with Ali Velshi on on his show on MSNBC. And he asked, how should we rewrite, To Kill a Mockingbird for it to be less problematic? And it’s like, why I’m not for rewriting things like we implement, right? I mean, and this is interesting, too, because, you know, the Terra, right, as a house as a plantation as a character is a really interesting device, for example. And I think it’s an it’s a, it’s a powerful device that still shaped so much experience and is relevant for black people like, right, and this is why we sort of are fixated on homeownership and getting a house and getting a land like this, this motif. So I don’t think we throw things away. I think we talk about them, honestly, and also attend to why they’re appealing to us. Right? And also use that right for the creation of art. Like if I every I love for has I read more has all the time for this was a horrific, racist, horrific racist. I mean, really, like not you sort of. And so I don’t like that. But I’m learning a great deal. And from the work that I take pleasure and the work right, and I don’t think I think we just have to be honest about that. I think there’s a different question when it’s someone who is alive and who’s who’s earning proceeds from the work for example. Sure. Right. But if we’re talking about things, historic work, you know, and then tell, tell the truth. fuller story, right? Yeah, that what the plantation household was like, right, but yeah, read the wind done gone with it. Right. Like, I mean, they say, you know, right.

Traci Thomas 17:35
Okay, great. I feel better. When you mentioned that in the book, and I was like, I’m gonna ask about this deal. Okay, I have one other personal thing, which is just a comment. You have a sweet tooth. I do. Me too. Another thing I found out that we have in common while reading your I was loving all the references to what you were eating your honey bun that you got at the store. I was like, yeah, oh, she has a sweet tooth. We love to have

Imani Perry 17:57
this huge sweet tooth. And I’m actually not eating sweets right now. Because I’m saving saving my sweet tooth up for when I go to New Orleans? Because I want them Yes, but I have to like I have such an intense sweet tooth. I have to de sugar myself pretty regularly.

Traci Thomas 18:14
Just you cut it off cold turkey.

Imani Perry 18:16
I do I have to attend. And I have the headaches and the withdrawal. But I mean, there’s also, you know, it’s a it’s a big part of Southern culture. And I wanted to think about sweetness, not in the shaming way. But I wanted to talk about what it meant for people who had such hardscrabble life lives and with limited resources, wanting a little bit of sweetness and wanting to give a little sweetness to each other, and that, that it’s a tenderness, right, it’s a bomb. It’s also though not unlike the things that are the kind of feelings that drive meth addiction and lean and all those. I mean, it’s, you know, there’s a lot of suffering, and a lot of very vulnerable people. And I’ve wanted to tell that story without it being sociological. Yeah, well, you know, without it being like, you know, judgmental, like, and so the best way is to be honest about it for me, like, when I’m tired when I’m overwhelmed when I’m sad, just some sweetness just like takes the edge off.

Traci Thomas 19:23
I am. I gonna say I mean, I definitely felt like in reading this book, my dad and his family. They’re from Baton Rouge, and they moved out here in the 30s. And so I’ve always really related to Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns because my dad, you know, the exact same path as the dog. Yeah, pretty much but reading your book reminded me that so much of who I am and so much of like, the pathology of my family is still rooted in Louisiana, you know, because my dad was very young. He was two when they moved out here. But you know, just like this book, really, it added so Much to my understanding of just like little tiny things that I just thought were my own unique quirks. I’m like, Oh, wait, that comes from somewhere. So I really, you know, appreciate it that. I do want to ask you one more thing, which is in the beginning, beginning of your book, you talked about capitalizing white, as in white people. And I would, I would love for you to sort of explain that because I know there’s a lot of conversation about capitalizing black and there’s some disagreement about capitalizing white.

Imani Perry 20:31
I mean, I for me, and now painter, the historian actually wrote a wonderful piece about the value of capitalizing white, I mean, capitalizing black to me has always been not just important, but appropriate, right? Because it, it describes a people, right, it’s like, it’s, it’s not just a color, right? But Black is produced in this country through whiteness, right? White actually is, it is a, an organizing social category. It created other categories, it disciplines people, it was used to absorb people according to law, according to status, you know. And so to make it lowercase, particularly in this book, I thought would have been disingenuous, it is actually a very important marker of identity. Right? No less significant, far more significant than American, right, are European or African. And so I thought it would have been dishonest to make why the lowercase? It’s the thing that just moving at all of this about and that doesn’t mean, I think the difficulty people have is that the implication is that the capital means it’s, it’s important in terms of it being a virtue, like it’s a good thing. Sure. It just is just, you know, right. I mean, now, what people do with it? That’s an open question. And I also, you know, it’s not as though I have a position that in other books, I necessarily would still capitalize white, but for the point for the point here, right to name what has happened here.

Traci Thomas 22:13
Yeah. Yeah, it’s important. Okay, this is my last question about the book. And it’s sort of a big one. So good luck to you. One of the things you talked about is like how the south bears the brunt of our shame in this country that like a lot of you know, the way that we think about America, we sort of are like, oh, and then there’s the South, the bad kid, and they’re a dropout. And do you think that there’s something connected to that idea in the way that we’re seeing a lot of these bills that are coming out of southern states, like the book banning, and also the book burnings, and knowing that that’s also happening in other non southern states? Like, do you think that that it’s, like, easier to just focus on what’s happening in Texas and Florida and Mississippi, and Tennessee? And not to acknowledge that it’s happening in Arizona? Because it is like part of the narrative? Or do you think that there is something about the South that is purposefully being cruel to children?

Imani Perry 23:07
Oh, no. I mean, I think there is it’s worse than the South that that question. And that has to do with politics. I think the thing that, for me is important. There’s a couple things. One is that part of the argument is that the South leads the way in terms historically, for better and worse, often for worse, right. So what, as the South goes, so goes the nation. So these are Harbingers, right? In the same way that the environmental crisis that the South is facing is going is coming to the rest of us. This kind of vile targeting of vulnerable children is not going to end in the south, this hostility to learning to knowledge is not going to end in the South. It’s often that and I think part of the way to get that as to understand the Red State Blue State thing is largely a fiction. It is a fiction predicated on the Electoral College, the electoral college is a product of southern power. Right, right, historically, right. And the slave autocracy, right. So it all is sort of hinges on this. So the the power of the South is sort of this red zone is a fiction because the whole country is purple. It’s always the case that the majority of white people vote with what is now a kind of a party that is like a NEO fascist party, right, the Republican Party. So it would be so naive to think that these things are going to stay there given the power of this ideology all over the country. Right. Right. So it’s a testing ground, right for what’s for what’s coming. And it is always because of the ability of the way that sort of right wing elites have Kim control politics in the NFL. It can be an aggressive testing ground because they have so much more leeway. Right? And they have these very old ways of keep Think people out of civic participation that they can pull out like a trick rabbit, but it’s not, you know, those things can be, you know, the Southern strategy, quote unquote, did not just, you know, wasn’t just rest upon the South, right. I mean, it grew. And I think it’s just important for us to, I know that and I especially thought about this during COVID. Like, not like we’re not in code anymore, but you know, like, yeah, like when people talk about not folks not masking, and they would talk about, well, of course, people aren’t masking in Alabama and Mississippi, but like, I’d go and walk around here in Philly, and there’d be people who were unmasked, it makes people feel safer to think these things are happening out there. But it’s not accurate, ultimately. And I think it allows us to be passive towards towards issues that are that are national and even global. So, yeah,

Traci Thomas 25:54
I’ve been thinking a lot about that. And also just the idea that, like, you’re saying that the whole country is purple, and also in a lot of these states that are controlled by the most red Republicans, they have the most black people, they do know, and it’s so so even though their representatives are white, racist, etc, etc. Yeah, that is not indicative of the people who live there. And it’s more indicative of the structures of gerrymandering, and

Imani Perry 26:24
yeah, the composition of the court, all of that.

Traci Thomas 26:28
So yeah, I think I think that’s my last question for now about this, though, I, we’re going to talk a little bit more about it. At the end of the month, when we talk about a mercy. So we do this once a month. I didn’t prep you at all for this. So this is where you show off your skills. It’s called Ask the stacks, people email me, they asked me for book recommendations. So we’re going to give a recommendation based on this little letter from Kelly M. who says, I’m just getting started getting into narrative nonfiction and investigative journalism books. I read and love the book about Jonestown that you always recommend, as well as I’m in the middle of empire of pain by Patrick Radden. Keefe, I know you have recommended a lot of these books, but I’m hoping you and your guests can give me some great rags for continuing exploring these genres. I’ve always been more of a fiction reader. So I’ll go first. I’ll give a few and then I’ll let you think and come up with some others. Okay, Kelly. So this first one I’m recommending, because apparently there’s a Hulu show coming out about it. And it’s one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, which is under the banner of heaven by Jon Krakauer. It’s about fundamentalist Mormons, and some there’s a murder in there. It’s so good. So that’s my first and I think, what’s the guy’s name from tick, tick, boom, Garfield, Andrew Garfield is in it. So I’m very excited about that. My next one is sort of a memoir. But it has some narrative nonfiction investigative journalism moments, which is men we reaped BY JASMINE ward. Yeah, I think she does such a beautiful job of sort of telling a story. So if you’re a fiction person, it’ll be there’ll be a through line. But also, she’s talking about structural things as well. And sort of like you Imani. You know, the structure of that book is so important. Yeah. And then my last one is the Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Raya, which is about it was written, I think, in 2004. And it’s about immigrants coming to America through Mexico. It’s a group of men and their experience. And it also kind of has a narrative story running through it, as well as a lot of research debates about sort of the history of immigration to America from Central and South America and sort of how, you know, all of a sudden, there was a border when there wasn’t one and all of that stuff. And it’s a modern classic. So those are mine, Amana, you don’t have to do three you could do like one or two or three, whatever you want.

Imani Perry 28:53
I will do a couple I mean, one is their old though. Truman Capote he’s in, in cold blood, which is right. kind of calm, because it’s a it’s an investigative journalism murder mystery story, but it really pushes the genre of narrative nonfiction. It’s absolutely brilliant compositionally. James Baldwin’s evidence of things not seen, which is a direct influence for me for South to America, but also because, you know, he goes to Atlanta in this really key moment in the wake of the Atlanta Child Murders in the 80s. And it just is so evocative about the structure of politics in the city, that is, calls itself the city too busy to hate, but which is very unequal. And, of course, you know, always south to a very old place, which is the most direct influence, but it’s Albert Murray goes on assignment back to the south. He’s living in New York at the time. He goes on assignment back to the south to figure in 1971 to figure out what has happened in the post Civil Rights Movement and it’s a beautiful rendering of the kind of interior XD Area relationship of a writer to their environment and relationship also to bodies of knowledge which is why when you know the sort of the question of like investigative journalism who’s out he’s talking to academics, he’s talking to business people he’s talking in that it just is how you know something is a really it’s a question that like the book implicitly asks, which is always always a good question.

Traci Thomas 30:26
I love it. I’ve not read the last two so I need to go and read those. Kelly if you read any of those books, let us know and for everyone else if you want to have your question read on air email, ask the stacks at the stocks podcast.com Okay, I am very excited for this right now we get into your favorite books or the books of your life and all of these things so we’re starting where we always start two books you love one book you hate

Imani Perry 30:50
Two books I love Oh gosh, I love so many books. How do I how do I even narrow this down? Okay, I’ll say this when I love Zora Neale Hurston Moses Man of the Mountain, that’s when that people don’t talk about that much. That is like, that’s really beautiful story of Hagar. I also love this is a philosophical book the lane Skerries on beauty and being just which is a book that’s a sort of a cause for understanding beauty as a virtue which is which is interesting. And the relationship between like, or the idea that that the conception of what is just as beautiful that’s really compelling. Oh, gosh, a book I hate. Okay. I got in trouble for this before. And I’m just gonna say it again. I got so much trouble Pride and Prejudice.

Traci Thomas 31:38
I hate I have been oh my god, I’m with you. You will not get in trouble here. This is a safe space for hating books that everyone else apparently thinks are great.

Imani Perry 31:47
What I said and they published in the New York Times with a headline that I didn’t like chain off. People wrote letters to the editor. People wrote letters to me they wrote letters to the president of the university she where I work, she should know better. She’s educated. She should know you’re supposed to like Jane Austen. It’s really fascinating.

Traci Thomas 32:06
Well, yeah, so like the university where you work aka Princeton. Yes. A small you may have heard of it, people. I know job. Yeah. Okay, what’s what’s the last just really great book you’ve read?

Imani Perry 32:21
Oh, you know what, I I just finished recently. I this is this is actually a really hard season because I haven’t had time to read and write like I usually do. And it’s, it’s, I’m really

Traci Thomas 32:34
impressed with for this book.

Imani Perry 32:36
Yeah. And traveling around and just sort of like, it’s hard to just kind of totally unplugged like, Yeah, but I just read the fortune men by Nick Diffa Muhammad, and it’s a really beautiful story about a Somali man who was falsely accused of murder in post war, England. And it’s, but it’s just sort of incredibly intimate. And also deals with with religion somewhat, too. It’s, it’s an it’s a hard novel, but it’s really extraordinarily composed.

Traci Thomas 33:14
So in your regular not doing press for your book and doing tours time. How do you read? Are you reading multiple books at once? Are you sort of reading for pleasure and for work? Or are you more of a what I call a one book pony.

Imani Perry 33:31
Okay, so with nonfiction, I’m always reading multiple books at once because so much of the nonfiction reading is either for teaching or for writing, or for writing references or you know, it’s like a lot. There’s this sort of the academic grind to read constantly. For pleasure reading, I’m very, very much a fiction person, and I will if I have the time I’ll read a book in one sitting

Traci Thomas 33:57
Are you a fast reader?

Imani Perry 33:58
I am this is one thing I will say I will brag about I am a scarily fast reader can read really, really, and my friends make a thing. So I was one of my friends asked me to read your manuscript. So I said okay, I’ve noticed and she said she was thinking oh, God, like she She just said she didn’t have time to read it cuz it was a couple hours later and she’s like, She just said she didn’t have time to read. pretending she said dementia, you had all these extensive notes. Oh, my God really bad. But I but I read books over and over again. And so yeah, both fiction and memoir. I love pleasure and those

Traci Thomas 34:32
Yeah, I’m so jealous. I’m a very slow reader. I wish I just I hate I just want to read there’s just too many books I want to read I’m like but I just I can’t so my long was

Imani Perry 34:44
but then there but then the books sometimes the best it’s so bad because if you like swallow, it’s like what the desert and you get this great book and then you’ve swallowed it and each one of you read it, but you have to give a little time. You wish you savored it. And so yeah. Yeah, good for work, but I don’t know. Good for the pleasure reading.

Traci Thomas 35:03
I meant to ask you this earlier for your work because like, whenever I google you, and I read your, like byline and all your things, it’s always like you have like a million jobs. But when you’re because you have a law degree, and you have a PhD, and you have all these things. When you’re teaching. Are you teaching like each semester? Are you teaching in different fields? Or do you have to like pick a department to work? Like, how does that work for you?

Imani Perry 35:27
Yeah, I mean, I teach all of my classes are in African American Studies, that’s the home department for all of them. So I teach classes that are interdisciplinary. So for example, I teach Yeah, like introduction to African American Studies, obviously, the African American intellectual tradition, I teach a course called race in the city, which includes, you know, memoir literature, but also sociological literature about the creation of cities and like, you know, yeah, yeah. So it’s, so they go inside the class. Got it.

Traci Thomas 35:55
So you sort of like can build your own class that includes different things. Okay. Got it. I was like, how does that work? Does she have to just decide like, Okay, I’m in the law department. Got it. Got it. Is there a book that you are looking forward to reading?

Imani Perry 36:12
Oh I am looking forward to Dolan Perkins Valdez’s next book, take my hand. And I loved her first novel I loved I’ve loved all of her work, but her first novel winch, which was about this resort is a historic historical fiction work of historical fiction, but about a resort where, you know, in slavers took the women they had enslaved who they serve, who were as, you know, they basically held as you know, institutionalized victims of sexual violence when they were concubines what they were called, and the first novel is about that. And then the second novel sheet was this beautiful work about a woman who was a psychic. And this novel takes place in Alabama. So I’m really excited to share her work as historical fiction at center as black woman. So super looking forward to that.

Traci Thomas 37:03
And then how do you decide? Like, how do you decide what you’re gonna read? Do you do read reviews? Are you having like books sent to you to your friends that suggests, like, trust to tell you what you want to read.

Imani Perry 37:17
I trust my friends, my friends have magnificent taste in books. And I have particular friends who are like, who I always take their reading rec recommendations. TSA, of course, and same Eddie.

Traci Thomas 37:31
He’s my number one. Anytime I’m like to read this, I’m like, do you notice?

Imani Perry 37:35
yeah. And also Eddie and Sarah from like, those, those three, if they say to read something, I will, I’ll read it. But also, I get so excited. Now you have people send books to me. And I, you know, I almost always try to pick them up. But it’s, it’s also really hard. And I know this is too, so 10 times harder for you than for me. But you realize when there’s so many good books that you just can’t possibly pay attention to all this. Yeah. Incredible work and as hard as you want writers to know.

Traci Thomas 38:06
Yeah. It’s really, really sad. It’s really, like, I just got Elizabeth Alexander’s new book, The Trayvon generation. Oh, yeah. And it’s like, so tiny and slim. And I want to read it like right today, right right now? Yes, yeah, I have an interview on Tuesday. And I still have 150 pages there. And I have an interview, like, and I’m just like, Fuck, I can’t like I’m like, When am I gonna get? I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m gonna see if my husband can’t be with my kids all day today and tomorrow, so that I can try to like read two books, but we’ll see. But I do know that feeling of like you want and then I want to read so many classics, because I’m very well read on like a lot of older books, like I know some of them. But there’s just so many books that I want to go back to and like to help me understand what I’m reading now. But anyways, okay, what’s a book that you like to recommend to people?

Imani Perry 38:58
so this one, this is easier. I still think that the book that every young person should read is Chinua Achebe’s things fall apart.

Traci Thomas 39:08
That’s what I have to read.

Imani Perry 39:11
It’s you should written at this. I mean, it’s you can read it in one sitting, but just to think about modernity in terms of, you know, encounter, domination, settlement, and what it what does it mean for one world to pass away in a new world to begin, I just think that’s something that every young person needs to know about human history, like what that meant for the reorganization of the world. And so it’s just this, it’s this very particular perspective, but I think it opens a frame of reference that helps helps us understand everything else. So yeah, I just come in that way.

Traci Thomas 39:51
You’re making me think of another question I have for you, which is sort of more because I want to know the answer. You have two sons that we did and got to know about it. And breathe. And I’m wondering, are they readers? Do you all have like a relationship to books together? Or is that not something that’s part of their lives at this point,

Imani Perry 40:10
um, my older son is more of a reader than my younger son. But, so, but we do read things together we always did when they were younger, but their readers in the other way, like, so they’re kind of interpreters, like they have I said, I’ve kind of critical. My eldest son is in college also. So of course, he’s reading all this. I mean, I’m gonna get Yeah, they read for school all the time, which is another thing too, but, you know, sort of the way that they had to when we watch watch films together, or exceeded the kind of assessment of the world their critics yeah, that’s, that’s the right word and there, but they are beautiful writers, both of them.

Traci Thomas 40:52
I love. I really want my children to be readers. So I’ve just yet to set up information from other parents hard,

Imani Perry 40:59
though, because like, I mean, I don’t, especially for someone my age, right? So I’ll be 50 this year, like, there is nothing to do for so much of every day besides read. Like, literally nothing else to do, like, right? You know, because there were fat like, even I watched a ton of TV as a kid. But everything was reruns. So we’ll get boring, right? So it’s much harder to become a voracious reader now,

Traci Thomas 41:25
but yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. You said that you love memoir and fiction? Are there any genres that you’re not that into? Or that you avoid?

Imani Perry 41:33
Hmm, I don’t like okay, I want to make a distinction here. I really like self help books, which I think would surprise people but I do I like the like, you know, write your best self like that kind of genre book or like, you know, touch touch to your spirit. But I don’t. But I don’t like, like, instructional books about social problems very much. Like I don’t, you know, I don’t like the like, this is how we’re going to, you know, end sexism type.

Traci Thomas 42:01
Like I call those like, race self help books. Yes. Kind of ones. Yeah. I don’t love those either. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Do you have a favorite bookstore?

Imani Perry 42:11
Oh, I love so many bookstores. I mean, I love in Philly. I love Uncle Bobby’s. I love Shakespeare sister. I haven’t been to Harry’s bookshop, but I love the folks there like we send. I love Charice books in Atlanta. I love a Harvard bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I love women and children first and Chicago and underbridge. I associate them with, you know, places I’ve spent a lot of time.

Traci Thomas 42:42
Yeah, this might be a taboo question. And you can just tell me to fuck off. Do you have a favorite of your books?

Imani Perry 42:49
Oh, that’s a good question.

Traci Thomas 42:51
I don’t know if you’re allowed to ask an author that but you have seven I think you have the most books besides Jason Reynolds and any guests I’ve ever had on the show.

Imani Perry 42:57
I mean, I love I love breeds because my children are my favorite people in the world, by far, by far, by far. And so anything that has anything to do with them. And the book I had the most fun writing I can answer that was maybe forever stand because so much. And that’s for people, I assume people haven’t read it. But it’s a book. That’s the history of Lift Every Voice and Sing the song known as the Black national anthem, and it was so much fun because I was in these archives that were just so delightful, where I’m like, Just reading school programs that describe what people were dressed were, what they were wearing, and what music they listen to the order of ceremony and, and memoirs, and they talk about, like, you know, their principles and their teachers and how wonderful that was, it’s like, it just it was such for someone who who has spent so much time researching racial violence, and Jim Crow laws and exclusion to be enmeshed in this gorgeous world that black adults built for black children to try to protect them in the archive was heaven. It was so much fun.

Traci Thomas 44:08
I wonder about like, the range of your work, because you have written so many books about like, really different things, you know, like Lorraine Hansberry, hip hop and like, I’m just wondering, how do you decide what you are wanting to spend time with for a book because I know your books, you know, write them in a month. I know you’re not one of those like how do you decide what you want to spend time with and like, what is what is your leading force and making a decision about what you want to write about?

Imani Perry 44:43
It’s definitely passion. I am not, you know, deliberate, like there are people who will say to me, oh, you should read about such and such because that would be really popular. And that’s like, I’m assuming an immediate turn off. Like, I don’t, I don’t care. So it’s all passion. I think Get Started, but I, you know, my mind is going into 1000 directions at once every day and I sort of throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. I must say, I’m a silly putty generation person, you know, like, you’re gonna throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks and go back to ideas and turn them over in your head and go down rabbit holes. And if you sometimes the rabbit holes interesting for half a day, like sometimes I’ll write one of my friends, and I’ll be like, I’m gonna write a book about this. And I’m like, okay, my new whatever. By tomorrow, I’m tired of it. Right? But I’m okay with you, over the years, and just as sort of what stays and or stays and grows or pushes you in new directions and right, yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 45:42
Because you had a year, or like, I don’t know, 16 months or something a few years back where you publish like three things. But was that just because they came? They just all came together at the end? Like so you are working on that maybe one for seven years and one for two years?

Imani Perry 45:57
Working on? Three books come out in 2018. And I had been working on all of them for five, six or seven years. Wow. That’s yeah.

Traci Thomas 46:08
Every one of them. Yeah. Bibliography people are gonna be like, Wait, what happened here? Yeah. Yeah, that’s it’s very confused.

Imani Perry 46:15
it’s hard because people think but there are people who say to me, Oh, well, you should slow down and I’m like, dude, like, I it takes me a long time to write and I spend a lot of time researching like, it literally is because I don’t work on things one at a time, because that’s not how my mind works, right? Like, I’m, I will wind up with writer’s block, I’ll get frustrated. I have to be able to turn my attention elsewhere and take a break. It’s just so I have just found the thing that makes this pleasurable for me instead of torturous. But there are people who who find that troubling.

Traci Thomas 46:52
like, you’ll be working on one book and get stuck and be like, Okay, let me just go over here and write about this other thing. And so it’s sort of just like a different I see. Yeah, so interesting. I have the opposite kind of mine. I have to be like, zeroed in on like one thing. More. So I just like, I can’t read a lot of books at once. Like, I really got to just be zone. Yeah. Okay, this is sort of our lightning round. So you’re just gonna kind of name off these titles. Okay. Okay. What’s the last book that made you laugh?

Imani Perry 47:19
Oh, gosh. Oh, black Moses.

Traci Thomas 47:23
Okay. What’s the last book that made you cry?

Imani Perry 47:26
Oh, when’s the last book that probably stopped to America?

Traci Thomas 47:31
Okay, what’s the last book that made you angry?

Imani Perry 47:35
Oh, I know. I just read it because I was looking at it again for for a different interview. I’ll take my stand, which was a book that was a bunch of seven or seven years of the who were bloggers who called the fugitives put together, that was kind of a justification for segregation and like this southern right wing, and they’re the same people who were the kind of who shaped new criticism and English literature and stuff, and it’s just kind of awful collection

Traci Thomas 48:01
of sequel sounds like what’s the last book where you felt like you learned a lot?

Imani Perry 48:09
I don’t know if it’s the last book where I felt I learned a lot, but I definitely learned a lot from begin again, at a glance. Again, again, that, you know, Baldwin’s lessons for a time helped me think about the world differently. I’ve been thinking, you know, helped me think about instead of like, I have this frame with thinking about racist like, in terms of contradiction, as opposed to for so long instead, as opposed to thinking about how this system was designed as net, not even necessarily intentional, but that is having all of its, it’s not contradiction, as much as like an internal incoherence that is very deliberate. And that helped me with thinking about South to America, but I keep sort of turning those concepts over my mind that were in that book.

Traci Thomas 48:56
Yeah. What’s a book that brings you joy?

Imani Perry 49:00
Jamaica Kincaid is a small place always brings me joy. Oh, Song of Solomon always brings me joy.

Traci Thomas 49:07
Do you think that Song of Solomon has a hopeful ending?

Imani Perry 49:10
Not really.

Traci Thomas 49:14
I really thought it did. I really felt like it was like a happy ending. I know that it might not be when we talked about on the show, I realized that maybe I was tripping but, but

Imani Perry 49:23
it’s, well, I think it’s ambiguous. I just, you know, pilot, my friend Gina, years ago, said to me, you know, pilot debt is my hero. And I had read it and I went back and I was like, she’s my hero, too. That’s why her vision of the world is what endures so to me that too, is that it has a happy lesson or maybe like, I feel like yeah, pilot is, you know, is the hero of the literary world.

Traci Thomas 49:55
Yes, yes. I’m a big guitar Stan, I love it.

Imani Perry 50:00
that’s really interesting. Yeah, guitars very Leo ever

Traci Thomas 50:04
have you very Leo have very pathological Are there any books that you’re embarrassed that you still have not read?

Imani Perry 50:14
Hmm, no, I don’t I mean, I will admit in a heartbeat about classics that I haven’t read. There’s so many books. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 50:23
So many books. What’s your problematic favorite book?

Imani Perry 50:29
Oh, problematic. Favorite. No, no rudas memoirs? Yeah, we’ll see you describes a sexual assault.

Traci Thomas 50:39
Yeah.

Imani Perry 50:40
Yeah. The horrific. And I had to think spend a lot of time reflecting on why I read past that scene as though I wasn’t reading what I was reading

Traci Thomas 50:52
multiple times. Interesting.

Imani Perry 50:56
Yeah, the seduction of beauty. You have to be very, we have to be really careful about things that we find beautiful. Or bring us pleasure, as wonderful as they are. Because they can. Yeah, anyway. We know that lesson from

Traci Thomas 51:08
a million different ways. Yeah, a million different ways. I mean, you are a professor, but if you were a high school teacher, what’s a book you would assign in class?

Imani Perry 51:17
Well, I have assigned it multiple times in college, but I would also assign it in high school. And Moody’s coming of age and Mississippi, which is Moody was an an organizer, who was in snick, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and an organizer in Mississippi Freedom Summer in the civil rights movement. And she was a native of the Mississippi Delta. And she wrote this memoir about her coming of age and you know, growing up in conditions of just incredible Delta, poverty and becoming an activist and going to school, but it is just this just a stunningly crafted memoir. It’s so beautiful, so evocative and meaningful. And everybody who reads it is transformed by it. And so when I’ve taught it, just I mean, that’s the book that every student connects to.

Traci Thomas 52:13
All right, I need to read your My list is growing is a slow book.

Imani Perry 52:15
It’s a slow book to like you. I mean, you really do cry. Honestly, you want to read in the summer, like when you have more time?

Traci Thomas 52:24
I don’t have I’m not a teacher in school. Yeah, summer is the same. Okay, you cater, but

Imani Perry 52:32
you need a teacher in school?

Traci Thomas 52:34
Yes. Yes, I am. I am I an educator? Absolutely. I don’t think of myself that way. But thank you. That’s makes me feel smart. Who would you want? You can’t say yourself, who would you want to write the book of your life?

Imani Perry 52:47
one of my children. Absolutely. One of my children. They just, they see so much that I don’t see I also neither of them would ever want to do that. But I’m just saying that’s what I would want.

Traci Thomas 52:57
Well, maybe they’ll hear this and be inspired.

Imani Perry 53:05
And I’m gonna write something interesting.

Traci Thomas 53:06
Thanks. Yeah. Oh, maybe we have you in maybe it’ll have your same mind. Well, they’ll be able to, like bring you in, like you brought so many of your people into South to America. Okay, this is my last one. And I stole this from the New York Times by the book. If you could require the current president to read one book, what would it be?

Imani Perry 53:22
Oh, what a great question.

Traci Thomas 53:25
So good. Can’t take credit. Yeah.

Imani Perry 53:28
Um, you know, it might be Exit West.

Traci Thomas 53:34
So that’s the first book club book we ever did on the show.

Imani Perry 53:39
Yeah, it’s just, it’s so stunning. And it and it’s honest, but it also like makes you imagine, is my friend and Sean Crawley says imagine otherwise. Like it makes you want to think about how to arrange a different kind of world is just this incredible, incredibly brilliant use of the speculative to make you imagine something other than the kind of cruelty at the current world.

Traci Thomas 54:03
yeah, that was a new book coming out this year.

Imani Perry 54:07
Um, so that when that day, everything will shut down for that? Yeah.

Traci Thomas 54:10
It’s called. It’s called, like the last white man or something like that. Okay, remember, but it’s coming out later this year. I’m very excited. All right, everybody. This has been a conversation with Imani Perry Amani, we’ll be back on March 30. We are reading a mercy for the sex book club by Toni Morrison. I will just let everyone know. I’m very nervous for this conversation. I cannot wait. So you’ll have to read the book. You have five Wednesday’s in March so you have extra time to read the book. You also need to go out and get him on his newest book south to America. You can get it wherever books are sold. If you’ve already read it, go get one of her other six books. There’s plenty of work for you to do people read your manies books are all amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Tracy, and everyone else we will see you in the stacks. All right, that does it for us today. Thank you all for listening and thank you to Imani for being my guest. I’d also like to thank Caitlin Mulroney Lisicki for helping coordinate this interview. Remember the sacks book club pick for March is a mercy by Toni Morrison and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday, March 30. With Imani Perry. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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