WRITER
For more than a decade, Melissa Harris-Perry has contributed to American public life through her distinct combination of scholarly analysis and ordinary wisdom applied to the analysis of race, gender, politics, and power. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other print and digital venues. She was among the initial cohort of writers for TheRoot.com and authored highly regarded columns for both Essence and The Nation. She has served as editor-at-large of Elle.com and ZORA and a contributing editor at The Nation.
GLAMOUR, 2020
Read Melissa Harris-Perry’s profile of Sherrilyn Ifill for Glamour, Women of the Year. October 2020. “Sherrilyn Ifill, Civil Rights Superhero” As the leader of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill is tasked with defending our most sacred freedoms. Amid renewed calls for racial justice, the legal powerhouse steps into the spotlight.
“This is what it’s like to talk to Ifill: You leave with a reading list. She has a staggering capacity to connect the dots, complete the puzzle, and reveal what links the past to our present struggles for justice. It’s a rare skill. For Sherrilyn Ifill, it’s a superpower.”
ELLE, 2020
Read Melissa Harris-Perry’s profile of Stacey Abrams for Elle. April 2020. “Stacey Abrams On Voting Rights, COVID-19, And Being Vice President”
Abrams hits her stride. “I feel beautiful when young black girls come up to me. They are not just excited to see me, but to see themselves in me. When little girls point to the gaps between their teeth because they haven’t had braces. They may come from families that will never be able to afford them, like mine couldn’t. I keep my gap. I could do Invisalign, but my gap is my mother’s gap. It’s my grandmother’s gap. This doesn’t make me less, because my parents didn’t have the money to have my teeth fixed with braces. And it doesn’t make me less when I stand before a nation and deliver the State of the Union response.”
ZORA, 2020
Read Melissa Harris-Perry’s State of the Union Roundtable for ZORA.
To protect our emotional health and keep our blood pressure stable, many of us will not tune in to watch as President Trump delivers his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday. Instead, we are using this opportunity to assess what the State of the Union is and feels like for women of color. We have convened a unique caucus of women of color working as writers, policymakers, activists, and elected officials and asked these exceptional leaders to reflect on the fragile yet formidable State of Our Union.
Sister Citizen
In this groundbreaking book, Melissa Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States.
BarberShops, Bibles, BET
Using statistical, experimental, and ethnographic methods Barbershops, Bibles, and B.E.T offers a new perspective on the way public opinion and ideologies are formed at the grassroots level. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of black politics by shifting the focus from the influence of national elites in opinion formation to the influence of local elites and people in daily interaction with each other. Arguing that African Americans use community dialogue to jointly develop understandings of their collective political interests, in a framework of contemporary black political thought.