Imani Perry finds room to improvise, to think on the page in what feels like real time. Her work walks a line between ethnography and history.

A vermilion dot on the forehead is one of India’s most widely accepted Hindu cultural insignias. But at the festival, where ...

I have always been someone who finds solace in the sound of rustling leaves, the rhythm of a melody, or the vivid colors of a painted ... of prioritizing eternal salvation. But here lies the ...

In 35 interconnected essays, Perry charts the history of the color of blue as interwoven ... Hell was the bottom of the ocean floor until it became salvation,” Perry writes.

The pilgrims come and go as strangers. They march like a sea of people, walking toward the spot where they take holy baths, drawn by the ...