The Warmth of Other Suns

Amazing book about a part of history that I knew basically nothing about before. Really enjoyed the parallel stories of the three main characters (characters isn't the right word but this book reads almost like fiction, so we'll use it). Great historical background and context to a lot of things that are still playing out in American culture today. Audio edition is very well-produced.

This is the most captivating and moving non-fiction work I've found in a long time. Isabel Wilkerson takes hundreds of hours of interviews and historical records research and turns them into 3 main narratives following real people starting in the southern US and ending in California, Chicago, and New York. I'd have loved to have each narrative straight through, as the characters were captivating in their own right - a sharecropper and family struggling in Mississippi, a citrus grove worker nearly lynched in Florida, and a doctor who found some amount of freedom in the army and then could not find joy in his Louisiana home or even his wife's Atlanta. However, Wilkerson splits them up into periods, so we meet the characters in their childhood in the south; we watch them each grow up; we see their struggles to leave the south, etc...all in parallel although their trips occurred at different times.

Through the narratives, we can feel the pain and indignity experienced by blacks all across the US (it was not completely isolated to the Jim Crow south) from their point of view. This is a painfully different story than we learned in history class: as it turns out, we did not have the Civil War followed by freedom and joy for the majority of black Americans. We had a Civil War followed by decades of terrible treatment for the majority of black Americans (on or off the books of law). The migration that Wilkerson covers goes into the 1970's - this means that only now do we have a generation of age without their own memory of such a time. Looking at current events suggests that these issues are still not resolved, and America struggles with deep racism. NOTE that many other peoples have integrated into the US during the last century and those with white skin do not face such extensive discrimination.

In addition to the compelling narrative, there are bits of poetry and prose sprinkled throughout from the likes of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, in just the right places to give those words fresh perspective.

I encourage everyone to read The Warmth of Other Suns. Younger folks may not understand, but high school on up can relate back to their incomplete history lessons and gain a better appreciation for the experience of a huge portion of our society.

In this book about the Great Migration of black Americans from the South to the North and West between 1915 and 1975, Isabel Wilkerson follows three families who left the South at different times, from different states, for different reasons. The stories she tells of these families are the backbone of the book, and they're fascinating.

This book likens the experience of black migrants to that of immigrants from around the world who were coming to America during the same years. It's a comparison that makes a lot of sense, though it was a new idea to me. Black migrants were fleeing terrible conditions in hopes of making a better life in a safer place. They went to places where they already knew people–relatives or other townspeople who had gone ahead of them. They came with very little, and were in competition with other immigrants for the dirty, dangerous jobs that no one else wanted to do. The crucial difference was that these were citizens in their own country, searching for a place where they would be treated as such.

It's beautifully written and completely absorbing. I enjoy learning about things like the history of Harlem in New York or the South Side of Chicago, and what it was like to work in the citrus groves of Florida in the 30's and 40's. What is most striking to me, though, is that most of the story that the book tells took place during the lifetimes of my parents and grandparents. Some of it took place even during my own lifetime. So, it's close to home and enlightening, like reading an account of a major event in your own city after you saw hints of it in the traffic and the moods of people around you.

I really loved this book.

A mixed bag. Wilkerson had me completely hooked on p. 12, talking about her parents, their migration story and the wonder it instilled in her. Her storytelling brings the book to life, following the paths of three real people who we come to deeply care about. These arcs, effectively presented in three parallel timelines, are moving and humbling and inspiring.

Unfortunately, like so many books these days, it suffers from poor editing. It's far too long, with unnecessary repetition: we don't need to have a full recap of material she introduced thirty pages ago, she doesn't have to spell out “Ray's wife, Della Bea” three times in two pages. And as captivating as she is in her storytelling, I found the writing tedious and opaque in the (blessedly infrequent) didactic portions. She seems hung up on finding a greater meaning in the Migration, trying to defend it through a sociological lens, but I never understood what she thinks needs defending: migration is as human as breathing. To me – a migrant from a disadvantaged country – the wonder isn't the migrants, it's those who remained. But that's a different book.

The migrants Wilkerson follows left hellish conditions worse than anything you or I have ever experienced, some with unrealistic dreams of finding utopias, others simply with a hope for better opportunities. All of them found the latter, with new problems and suffering, and it was a beautiful experience to read and learn how each of them made the best of those. Wilkerson shines when conveying the joys and disappointments and feelings of these three amazing lives. I think I'm going to carry these stories with me for a long time.

This is a story I've never heard before. It's not a small story. It's the story of the migration of an enormous throng of people from the Deep South to the North during the twentieth century in the United States.

How is it that I have heard nothing of this before now? Not in school or college or in my leisure reading, reading which is often historical.

I loved this book. Well researched. Detailed. Personal.

wowwww like it's not a hot take that a Pulitzer-prize winning books is great but also, wow, it was great.

I was a little intimidated to start reading it because it's long and my attention span has been frazzled due to the everything, but it's SO interesting and so readable. It was brilliant of her to focus in on 3 of her many interviewees (while supplementing with other research/anedcotes from other interviews) because it gave you these three “main characters” (who are real people) to follow and be invested in.

It's really compelling and infuriating. (Also there's some graphic descriptions of lynching that I regretted reading before bed personally!) But truly an important and great book that fills in a lot of gaps left by most US history classes/books etc.