Breathe, A Letter to My Sons with Imani Perry (10-1-20)

Award-winning author Imani Perry talks with Jaimee A. Swift from Black Women Radicals about her new book Breathe: A Letter to my Sons. Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, new from Imani Perry, 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 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. “Breathe is a parent’s unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children’s right simply to be possible.” —The New York Times Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, and in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and spent much of her youth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago. She is the author of several books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons, Freeman Diallo Perry Rabb and Issa Garner Rabb. Jaimee A. Swift is the executive director of Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting Black women and gender non-conforming and non-binary people's radical activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Breathe: https://bookshop.org/shop/unclebobbies Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Wsgr52Z2qIw Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks