South to America

Using the lens of her Black identity, Harvard Radcliffe Institute and Harvard University professor Imani Perry — whose books include May We Forever Stand and Breathe: A Letter to My Sons — provides a personal tour through today’s southern American states. Perry uses historical stories from Black American history to set a context for the present.

In this National Book Award winner, she explains that the South holds the roots of what it is to be American. Home to a complex culture sprouted from a conflict-ridden history, it is where the founding fathers dismissed the rights they codified, the past refuses to go away, and class and racial stereotypes still seem to shape the future, but still, there is progress and hope.