Breathe: A Letter to My Sons Audiobook (Free)

Explores the terror, elegance, and beauty of coming of age like a Dark person in modern America and what this means to mother or father our children inside a persistently unjust globe.

Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children mainly because deserving of humanity. She admits dread and frustration for her African American sons in a society that’s increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. Nevertheless, as a mom, feminist, writer, and about Breathe: A Letter to My Sons intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered manifestation of love-finding beauty and probability in life-and she exhorts her children and their peers to get the courage to chart their own pathways and find regular footing and inspiration in Black tradition.

Perry pulls upon the ideas of figures such as Adam Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her very own existence and from encounters in places as varied as the West Aspect of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools.

With original art for the cover by Ekua Holmes, Breathe offers a broader yoga on competition, gender, and the meaning of a lifestyle well lived and can be an unforgettable lesson in Black level of resistance and resilience.