Imani Perry’s book entitled South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, has won a National Book Award for nonfiction. The author is a professor of African American studies at Princeton and makes frequent trips to the American South to examine socioeconomic status and politics.
Her book “straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing, said Tayari Jones of The New York Times. Any attempt to label the project “only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project.”
During her acceptance speech, Perry said: “I write for my people. I write because we children of the lash-scarred, rope-choked, bullet-ridden, desecrated are still here, standing.
She continued: “I write for the sinned-against and the sanctified. I write for the ones who clean the toilets and till the soil and walk the picket lines. For the hungry, the caged, the disregarded, the holding on-I write for you. I write because I love sentences, and I love freedom more.”