Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The Princeton and Slavery Project, replete with documents, plays, and paintings, was an answer of sorts. It told the university’s sordid history, in part. There are now historical markers on campus and special tours. But the full consequences of the slave past haven’t yet been unearthed. They reached far beyond 1865. In the ’50s, James Baldwin felt
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
boxes in the States: Tastee
Paul Theroux • Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China
DC is being gentrified like major cities everywhere. It raises the question: To whom does this place belong? That is a local question, but it is also an existential one. We are literally still fighting over whether Black people belong to their home places and whether their home places belong to them. Once, the formerly enslaved migrated to DC with
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
Farnam Streetfs.blognewsworthiness rarely brings destroyed White bodies to the front page of the newspaper.
Teju Cole • Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time (Berlin Family Lectures)
Look anywhere where there is a preponderance of Black achievement, and graduates of Morehouse and Spelman are disproportionately represented in that number. Unsurprisingly, those campuses that produce the Black leadership class in this country are also sites of the growing pains of Black America, places where sexuality, gender, and class are played
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Elvis’s life before fame featured repeated experiences with humiliation, but he also experienced something else characteristic of the South and the United States in general: the wages of Whiteness. An effort to place Elvis more accurately in history doesn’t just require a recognition that he saw his indebtedness to Black musicians. It also means
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
