BABEL: Imani Perry
MacArthur genius and National Book Award winner Imani Perry unveils her new book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Blending history, art, and personal reflection, Perry illuminates the forces that have shaped American life and the Black imagination through the color blue—from indigo cloth to blues music.
Join us for a revelatory evening with one of today’s most powerful thinkers and poetic voices.
In-Person Tickets Virtual Tickets Read Featured Artist Bio
Black In Blues
In Black In Blues, Imani Perry “establishes herself as the most important interpreter of Black life in our time . . . This is an extraordinary book.”
— Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again and We Are the Leaders
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry.
Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.
What’s YOUR “Blue” Story? Inspired by Perry’s moving book, Just Buffalo invites you to share what “blue” means to you.
Individual BABEL Tickets
Individual BABEL event tickets include a ticket for in-person attendance to one of the four BABEL events at Kleinhans Music Hall, as well as a virtual link to view from home via Livestream. All tickets will be issued via the Kleinhans/BPO website for the 2025–2026 season.
- General Admission: $48 each
- General Admission with Library Card: $43 each
- VIP Patron: $115 each (includes catered pre-event reception attended by the featured author and reserved seating)
- Student: $15 each (must use a valid .edu email address to purchase, and present a valid Student ID at the event)
- Virtual Only: $35 each
NOTE: Currently, proof of COVID-19 vaccination is not required for entry to BABEL events. We will continue to monitor health & safety recommendations and communicate any changes or updates to ticketholders as necessary. Please note that we are unable to provide refunds for tickets.
Planning on Watching from Home?
- If you choose to watch from home instead of attending in-person, the virtual link will be sent to you from babel@justbuffalo.org.
- You must be signed up for the Just Buffalo Newsletter in order to receive the virtual link. (To sign up, use the form in the footer of the website.)
- Click here to purchase VIRTUAL ONLY TICKETS
Date
- Thursday, April 23, 2026
Time
Doors & VIP Patron Reception at 6:30 p.m. | Event at 7:30 p.m.- 7:30 pm
More Info
Location
- 3 Symphony Circle, Buffalo, NY 14201
Other Locations
Featured Artist
-
Imani PerryAuthorBorn just nine years after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow IMANI PERRY was instilled from an early age with a strong instinct for justice and progressive change. The rich interplay between history, race, law, and culture continues to inform her work as a critically-acclaimed author and professor of studies of women, gender and sexuality and of African and African American studies at Harvard University.
Perry’s work reflects the deeply complex history of Black thought, art, and imagination. Her latest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, is a surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture from indigo to Louis Armstrong and beyond.
Her National Book Award-winning book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, is a narrative journey through the American South, in which Perry asserts that if we do indeed want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Her book Breathe: A Letter to My Sons 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.
In each of her previous works, Perry endeavors to apply the lessons of modern history to our present struggle, whether to challenge or to celebrate. Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry is a revealing biography of one of the most gifted and charismatic—yet least understood—Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century; May We Forever Stand traces the history of the Black National Anthem; More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States is an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that persist despite formal declarations of racial equality; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation is a work of critical theory that traces the thread of modern patriarchy from the transatlantic slave trade and the age of conquest through the present day; Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop engages with the artistry, politics, and culture of hip hop.
Perry’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and Harper’s, among other publications. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.