This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies and today for Terry Gross.

Our guest, Princeton African American Studies Professor Imani Perry, was born in Birmingham,

Alabama.

Though she moved away with her family as a child and is lived in Cambridge, Chicago, and

the Philadelphia area, she's always considered Birmingham home.

Perry has a new book about the American South, written as a journey through its states, cities,

and rural communities.

In each chapter, she focuses on a place and reflects on its distinctive relationship to the

region's history of slavery and racism, drawing in her own extensive knowledge of literature,

music, art, and folklore, as well as her own family history.

Imani Perry earned a bachelor's degree from Yale, then a law degree at Harvard, where

she also received her PhD in American Studies.

She's currently the Hughes Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton,

and the author of six previous books, including Looking for Lorraine, a biography of playwright

Lorraine Hansberry, and most recently, Breathe, a letter to my sons.

Her new book is South to America, a journey below the Mason Dixon line to understand the

soul of a nation.

Well, Imani Perry, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thank you, delighted to be here.

You are, as I said, a child of the South, a native of Birmingham, now teaching in an Ivy

League institution.

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