Dexterous ... Perry is also expert at a less-sterile mode of writing, and what follows is a kind of affective investigation into the many roles of blueness in Black life ... Even if blue were a literary device, the book would not be spoiled. What unites its disparate contents is a mood, which is just as valuable as an argument. It is a contrapuntal document, musical and moving, and no less rich for its tumbling abundance. In place of clear conclusions are persistent themes, like recurring notes in a song.
Ranges...widely ... The book drifts, like the ocean; it turns suddenly cloudy, like the heavens; it trills, like the jaybird (to which another chapter is devoted). It will have you looking afresh even at your corner mailbox.
Perry...fills her latest work with accounts of ingenuity and Black resilience that are held together, loosely but intentionally, with threads of cerulean, sapphire, and azure. What might, on the surface, look like an arbitrary correlation coheres into a revelatory entry point for contemplating the Black experience ... Wide-ranging ... Perry arranges her exploration of Black history in a way that may seem formless but could be described as a meticulously arranged series of 'blue notes'—those tones in blues music that are played or sung slightly below what one might expect ... Attuned to the high, the low, and the blue notes that compose Blackness—and we would all do well to listen.
Perry effortlessly mixes memory with social commentary to unravel blue’s significance ... Not only is Perry well read in history, but she is also an appreciator of literature, music, and art ... Black and blue are brilliant and so is Black in Blues.
The beats of Perry’s story are not unfamiliar; Black in Blues does not position itself as revisionist. What’s compelling, when and where Perry peers inside of the familiar, through her black and blue lens, to provide us new ways of looking at it, is that the two concepts have become inseparable ... Perry asks us to see Black people’s relationship to the color blue in its spiritual and material specialness, and though blue carries immense tragedy inside of it, neither black nor blue is wholly defined by the cruelty that links them ... Black and blue are conjoined; this is a book about the how, not the why ... Such is her prerogative, and the book doesn’t suffer any great loss because of this. It accomplishes the author’s goal—this is what any criticism must take into account—of stitching a black and blue quilt with intricate streams, fresh and well-worn patches, to craft a story worth retelling ... Still, and particularly if you are familiar with Perry’s other work, it can leave you feeling a bit wanting, denied her interpretative prowess.
The sheer breadth and depth of this mosaic telling speaks to the power of Perry’s craft as both scholar and storyteller, illustrating the beauty of the very culture about which she writes.
