Birmingham’s Imani Perry, MacArthur Fellow, on Her Most Important Lesson

By Tamika Moore Imani Perry is an interdisciplinary scholar and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She was honored with a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship, known as MacArthur Foundation “genius grants.” Though she’s a “genius,” there’s one thing she’s not good at. “Singing. I cannot carry a tune to save my life. If I could sing, I would be so conceited. So, it’s a good thing God knew not to give me a voice. I would ideally be like Whitney (Houston), but I think given my personality, Natalie Cole. Her father was from Alabama. Her mother was from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has the tone that sort of combines those places. So yeah, I feel like she would be the person if I could sing, I would sing like.” Perry’s grandmother is at the center of everything she does. “She instilled in me an extraordinary amount of self-regard. She instilled in me the daily habit of reading through the newspaper every day, and extraordinary grace in the face of all kinds of obstacles. She taught me how to move through life with grace. Everything that I write has her at the center. She grew up in Huntsville. She went to...