Imani Perry has won the National Book Award for nonfiction for her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.
According to reports, Perry sought to understand the South, the region where she was born, and which contains, she believes, the key to understanding America.
“I write for my people,” Perry said as she accepted the award. “I write because we children of the lash-scarred, rope-choked, bullet-ridden, desecrated are still here, standing.”
Perry is a professor of African-American studies at Princeton who has written a number of books about the Black experience. A contributor at the Atlantic, her newsletter, Unsettled Territory, has primarily become a place to do what Perry calls “rootwork,” examining America’s history to better understand the present. But she has also delved into every corner of America’s contemporary culture, recently examining what her Twitter account means to her or Americans’ fascination with royalty.
