Does one color mean something special to Black folks?

Like the color blue, Imani Perry’s “Black in Blues” is vast, multifaceted and enchanting.

Perry’s book, also like the hue, defies categorization. Her exploration of blue is presented in 35 tight, radiant chapters that read like a blend of memoir and history.

They’re more than memoir and history, though. Because the past is prologue, as we know so well these days, what’s historical also ends up being personal. In “Black in Blues,” Perry writes of herself, her interests and the myriad ways blue shows up in her present and her ancestry. But her work here — her art here — is broader than that. Blue is, too.

“In my grandmother’s bedroom, I learned to love blue,” the “South to America” author and MacArthur “genius” grant recipient explains early in the book. “I also learned about the blues. She taught me that we who have the blues also have beauty.”

Perry has been working on what she calls her “blue book” for years. That stand-in title is doing a lot of work. Blue books were commonly used by schools for written exams, and they’re making a comeback lately as a way to make sure students, who must show their work in them, don’t use artificial intelligence. Part of me still wants to call “Black in Blues” Perry’s blue book. Every other label — essays on blue, a memoir in blue, even studies of blue — feels too small.

That’s because blue, as Perry reveals, is color and culture, commerce and concept, music and memories. It’s simultaneously clear and abstract. Blue has proven itself to be compelling to people for centuries — especially Black people.

Perry is particularly interested in blueness and Blackness, in both the color and Black people’s enduring fascination with it. As the book’s actual title makes clear, blue and Black have long been intertwined. Within that, it becomes apparent that blue is captivating to all people. Some people are drawn to its beauty; some are drawn to blue as business. For myself, after reading “Black in Blues,” I’ll never regard the color’s loveliness (or a blue pair of jeans) the same way again.

Perry is an interdisciplinary scholar, teaching and researching on race, law, literature, African American studies and women, gender and sexuality studies. Her mind, her background, her training and her interests make Perry the perfect person to write about blue, the color of not only the sky but also the indigo cloths that were created in Africa and thus played a role in the theft of human lives. She writes about blues music and the hopefulness of a blue sky.

This book couldn’t only be a memoir, or history, sociology, business or art. Any thoughtful consideration of blue had to be all of those things and more.

Because our history remains present and personal in American life today‚ as I read “Black in Blues” and took in 1,000 amazing facts about blue, I learned about the past and the present through stories that are global, national, cultural and personal. I gained insights about the world and about America, hundreds of years ago and today. I learned about people in general, about Perry’s and my people and about myself.

“Black in Blues” also gave me a renewed sense of direction, a clarity of purpose. Here it is: Hold fast to beauty. It has everything you need. It has everything we need.

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a St. Paul-based essayist, critic and poet, whose “Worldly Things” was published by Milkweed Editions.

Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

By: Imani Perry.

Publisher: Ecco, 256 pages, $28.99.