Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books kicks off its 2025 season with yet another high-profile event with National Book Award winner Imani Perry returning to the local author discussion series to talk about her new work “Black in Blues.”

Perry, a MacArthur Fellow who won the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction for “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” will discuss her latest book Jan. 29 at First United Methodist Church of Germantown. She will talk about the book with author-activist Marc Lamont Hill, who owns Uncle Bobbie’s. 

In “Black in Blues,” Perry, a professor at Harvard University, discusses the historical connections between the two colors in the context of African American history. The book considers that while terms such as “blue skies and blue water” offer hope, blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” Perry traces both blue and Blackness from “their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture.”

Doors open at 6 p.m. General admission is $8.99. Tickets priced at $31.99 include a copy of the book. The church is at 6001 Germantown Ave.  For information visit unclebobbies.com/events.

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