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Listening to Writers of Color
November 24, 2020 at 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
The UUA is pleased to announce that Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry (Beacon Press, 2019) is the new Common Read. It is the book that our Listening to Writers of Color group has chosen for the month of November
Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues a challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love—finding beauty and possibility in life — and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition. The New York Times calls Breathe “an elixir of history, ancestry and compassion, which, together, become instruction … a parent’s unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children’s right simply to be possible.”
Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience.