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In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
They came from Natchez and Eustis and Port Arthur and Selma. They rode the rails, drove new Buicks and old Packards, whatever it took to cover those hundreds of miles. Their journeys ended in New York and Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles. This Great Migration, as historians would come to call it, saw millions of black Americans relocate from the rural South to the urban North and West between 1910 and 1970, reshaping the nation's cultural, political, and social landscape in the span of a lifetime.
In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson has rendered the most sweeping, most moving record of the Great Migration to date. It is at once history told on a grand scale -- like Taylor Branch's civil rights era trilogy -- and biography written with a quality of empathy perhaps only available to a child of the Migration herself. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, now Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University, has synthesized a staggering amount of material, comprising 1,200 interviews with migrants conducted over ten years as well as countless archival documents and newspaper reports. She argues that the Great Migration is "the most underreported story of the twentieth century," an historical turning point that would "transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched."
The roots of 21st-century racial inequality, Wilkerson argues, pass directly through the Great Migration. New arrivals from the South faced lower wages and higher rents, economic exploitation and continued segregation, setting up a cycle of inequality that became a birthright to their children and their children's children. "Multiplied over the generations," Wilkerson writes, "it would mean a wealth deficit between the races that would require a miracle windfall or near asceticism on the part of [black] families if they were to have any chance of catching up or amassing anything of value."
The Warmth of Other Suns, however, is more narrative than polemic. Wilkerson grounds her book in the life stories of three migrants -- Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling -- each of whom, she explains "left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes." She takes us into places that few writers have gone: the sharecropper's day of reckoning with the white planter; the Pullman porter's deft handling of a potentially incendiary racial confrontation; the citrus picker's last minute escape from the lyncher's rope.
In her loving projections of the internal lives of her subjects, Wilkerson takes us beyond the shock of racism to a kind of nostalgia for a type of black experience that may have only existed under segregation. This experience is, of course, shot through with peril -- the arbitrary horror of racial violence, the everyday privation of life under Jim Crow -- but nonetheless suffused with richness: the warmth of close communities, the sweet pleasures of companionship and music and laughter. Finally, Wilkerson's narrative is not a tale of loss but a life-affirming portrait of endurance and transcendence, of simple acts done with deliberate intent.
One hesitates to describe a book that stretches beyond 700 pages as vigorously paced, but that is precisely what Wilkerson has achieved. Short sections comprised of shorter chapters that alternate among her three subjects generate and sustain a crisp narrative momentum. This patchwork structure, however, occasionally comes at a cost. In particular, the numerous epigraphs that introduce both the book's parts and its chapters (there are a staggering forty-seven epigraphs in all) soon come off more like impediments than insights, regardless of how rich each passage might be in isolation. Nonetheless, such minor narrative detours finally serve to remind us that only a chorus of voices could make such a book possible.
The Warmth of Other Suns is an impassioned history, by turns sweeping and specific, celebratory and shocking. Like a literary companion to the artist Jacob Lawrence's Migration series, it tells the story of the Great Migration in terms both vibrant and bold. It is a history not of power barons and political leaders, but of everyday people whose individual acts of bravery and self-assertion combined to reshape a nation. Wilkerson has done an invaluable service to all those who would resist the slow creep of historical amnesia, particularly when it comes to the most painful details of our national life. This is a book that enacts the very thing it describes; like the brave lives of the people she writes about, it is a testimony, a challenge, and a timely reminder of our still unfulfilled promise of a more perfect union.
--Adam Bradley
Adam Bradley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the author, most recently, of Ralph Ellison in Progress.
Isabel Wilkerson won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her reporting as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. The award made her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. She won the George Polk Award for her coverage of the Midwest and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared. This is her first book.
Part One
In the Land of the Forefathers
Our mattresses were made
of corn shucks
and soft gray Spanish moss
that hung from the trees. . . .
From the swamps
we got soup turtles
and baby alligators
and from the woods
we got raccoon,
rabbit and possum.
—Mahalia Jackson, Movin’ On Up
Leaving
This land is first and foremost
his handiwork.
It was he who brought order
out of primeval wilderness . . .
Wherever one looks in this land,
whatever one sees that is the work of man,
was erected by the toiling
straining bodies of blacks.
—David L. Cohn, God Shakes Creation
They fly from the land that bore them.
—W. H. Stillwell
1
Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Late October 1937
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney
The night clouds were closing in on the salt licks east of the oxbow lakes along the folds in the earth beyond the Yalobusha River. The cotton was at last cleared from the field. Ida Mae tried now to get the children ready and to gather the clothes and quilts and somehow keep her mind off the churning within her. She had sold off the turkeys and doled out in secret the old stools, the wash pots, the tin tub, the bed pallets. Her husband was settling with Mr. Edd over the worth of a year’s labor, and she did not know what would come of it. None of them had been on a train before—not unless you counted the clattering local from Bacon Switch to Okolona, where, “by the time you sit down, you there,” as Ida Mae put it. None of them had been out of Mississippi. Or Chickasaw County, for that matter.
There was no explaining to little James and Velma the stuffed bags and chaos and all that was at stake or why they had to put on their shoes and not cry and bring undue attention from anyone who might happen to see them leaving. Things had to look normal, like any other time they might ride into town, which was rare enough to begin with.
Velma was six. She sat with her ankles crossed and three braids in her hair and did what she was told. James was too little to understand. He was three. He was upset at the commotion. Hold still now, James. Lemme put your shoes on, Ida Mae told him. James wriggled and kicked. He did not like shoes. He ran free in the field. What were these things? He did not like them on his feet. So Ida Mae let him go barefoot.
Miss Theenie stood watching. One by one, her children had left her and gone up north. Sam and Cleve to Ohio. Josie to Syracuse. Irene to Milwaukee. Now the man Miss Theenie had tried to keep Ida Mae from marrying in the first place was taking her away, too. Miss Theenie had no choice but to accept it and let Ida Mae and the grandchildren go for good. Miss Theenie drew them close to her, as she always did whenever anyone was leaving. She had them bow their heads. She whispered a prayer that her daughter and her daughter’s family be protected on the long journey ahead in the Jim Crow car.
“May the Lord be the first in the car,” she prayed, “and the last out.”
When the time had come, Ida Mae and little James and Velma and all that they could carry were loaded into a brother-in-law’s truck, and the three of them went to meet Ida Mae’s husband at the train depot in Okolona for the night ride out of the bottomland.
2
Wildwood, Florida, April 14, 1945
George Swanson Starling
A man named Roscoe Colton gave Lil George Starling a ride in his pickup truck to the train station in Wildwood through the fruit-bearing scrubland of central Florida. And Schoolboy, as the toothless orange pickers mockingly called him, boarded the Silver Meteor pointing north.
A railing divided the stairs onto the train, one side of the railing for white passengers, the other for colored, so the soles of their shoes would not touch the same stair. He boarded on the colored side of the railing, a final reminder from the place of his birth of the absurdity of the world he was leaving.
He was getting out alive. So he didn’t let it bother him. “I got on the car where they told me to get on,” he said years later.
He hadn’t had time to bid farewell to everyone he wanted to. He stopped to say good-bye to Rachel Jackson, who owned a little café up on what they called the Avenue and the few others he could safely get to in the little time he had. He figured everybody in Egypt town, the colored section of Eustis, probably knew he was leaving before he had climbed onto the train, small as the town was and as much as people talked.
It was a clear afternoon in the middle of April. He folded his tall frame into the hard surface of the seat, his knees knocking against the seat back in front of him. He was packed into the Jim Crow car, where the railroad stored the luggage, when the train pulled away at last. He was on the run, and he wouldn’t rest easy until he was out of range of Lake County, beyond the reach of the grove owners whose invisible laws he had broken.
The train rumbled past the forest of citrus trees that he had climbed since he was a boy and that he had tried to wrestle some dignity out of and, for a time, had. They could have their trees. He wasn’t going to lose his life over them. He had come close enough as it was.
He had lived up to his family’s accidental surname. Starling. Distant cousin to the mockingbird. He had spoken up about what he had seen in the world he was born into, like the starling that sang Mozart’s own music back to him or the starling out of Shakespeare that tormented the king by speaking the name of Mortimer. Only, George was paying the price for tormenting the ruling class that owned the citrus groves. There was no place in the Jim Crow South for a colored starling like him.
He didn’t know what he would do once he got to New York or what his life would be. He didn’t know how long it would take before he could send for Inez. His wife was mad right now, but she’d get over it once he got her there. At least that’s what he told himself. He turned his face to the North and sat with his back to Florida.
Leaving as he did, he figured he would never set foot in Eustis again for as long as he lived. And as he settled in for the twenty-three-hour train ride up the coast of the Atlantic, he had no desire to have anything to do with the town he grew up in, the state of Florida, or the South as a whole, for that matter.
3
Monroe, Louisiana, Easter Monday, April 6, 1953
Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
In the dark hours of the morning, Pershing Foster packed his surgery books, his medical bag, and his suit and sport coats in the trunk, along with a map, an address book, and Ivorye Covington’s fried chicken left over from Saturday night.
He said good-bye to his father, who had told him to follow his dreams. His father’s dreams had fallen apart, but there was still hope for the son, the father knew. He had a reluctant embrace with his older brother, Madison, who had tried in vain to get him to stay. Then Per- shing pointed his 1949 Buick Roadmaster, a burgundy one with whitewall tires and a shark-tooth grille, in the direction of Five Points, the crossroads of town.
He drove down the narrow dirt roads with the ditches on either side that, when he was a boy, had left his freshly pressed Sunday suit caked with mud when it rained. He passed the shotgun houses perched on cinder blocks and hurtled over the railroad tracks away from where people who looked like him were consigned to live and into the section where the roads were not dirt ditches anymore but suddenly level and paved.
He headed in the direction of Desiard Street, the main thorough- fare, and, without a whiff of sentimentality, sped away from the small-town bank buildings and bail bondsmen, the Paramount Theater with its urine-scented steps, and away from St. Francis Hospital, which wouldn’t let doctors who looked like him perform a simple tonsillectomy.
Perhaps he might have stayed had they let him practice surgery like he was trained to do or let him walk into the Palace and try on a suit like anyone else of his station. The resentments had grown heavy over the years. He knew he was as smart as anybody else—smarter, to his mind—but he wasn’t allowed to do anything with it, the caste system being what it was. Now he was going about as far away as you could get from Monroe, Louisiana. The rope lines that had hemmed in his life seemed to loosen with each plodding mile on the odometer.
Like many of the men in the Great Migration and like many emigrant men in general, he was setting out alone. He would scout out the New World on his own and get situated before sending for anyone else. He drove west into the morning stillness and onto the Endom Bridge, a tight crossing with one lane acting like two that spans the Ouachita River into West Monroe. He would soon pass the mossback flatland of central Louisiana and the Red River toward Texas, where he was planning to see an old friend from medical school, a Dr. Anthony Beale, en route to California.
Pershing had no idea where he would end up in California or how he would make a go of it or when he would be able to wrest his wife and daughters from the in-laws who had tried to talk him out of going to California in the first place. He would contemplate these uncertainties in the unbroken days ahead.
From Louisiana, he followed the hyphens in the road that blurred together toward a faraway place, bridging unrelated things as hyphens do. Alone in the car, he had close to two thousand miles of curving road in front of him, farther than farmworker emigrants leaving Guatemala for Texas, not to mention Tijuana for California, where a northerly wind could blow a Mexican clothesline over the border.
PART ONE In the Land of the Forefathers 1
Leaving 3
The Great Migration, 1915-1970 8
PART TWO Beginnings 17
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney 19
The Stirrings of Discontent 36
George Swanson Starling 47
Robert Joseph Pershing Foster 72
A Burdensome Labor 95
The Awakening 124
Breaking Away 165
PART THREE Exodus 181
The Appointed Time of Their Coming 183
Crossing Over 205
PART FOUR The Kinder Mistress 223
Chicago 225
New York 227
Los Angeles 230
The Things They Left Behind 238
Transplanted in Alien Soil 242
Divisions 260
To Bend in Strange Winds 285
The Other Side of Jordan 302
Complications 332
The River Keeps Running 351
The Prodigals 364
Disillusionment 371
Revolutions 385
The Fullness of the Migration 413
PART FIVE Aftermath 433
In the Places They Left 435
Losses 445
More North and West Than South 455
Redemption 465
And, Perhaps, to Bloom 481
The Winter of Their Lives 491
The Emancipation of Ida Mae 516
Epilogue 527
Notes on Methodology 539
Afterword 545
Acknowledgments 547
Notes 555
Index 589
Permissions Acknowledgments 621
1. The Warmth of Other Suns combines a sweeping historical perspective with vivid intimate portraits of three individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. What is the value of this dual focus, of shifting between the panoramic and the close-up? In what ways are Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster representative of the millions of other migrants who journeyed from South to North?
2. In many ways The Warmth of Other Suns seeks to tell a new story—about the Great Migration of southern blacks to the north—and to set the record straight about the true significance of that migration. What are the most surprising revelations in the book? What misconceptions does Wilkerson dispel?
3. What were the major economic, social, and historical forces that sparked the Great Migration? Why did blacks leave in such great numbers from 1915 to 1970?
4. What were the most horrifying conditions of Jim Crow South? What instances of racial terrorism stand out most strongly in the book? What daily injustices and humiliations did blacks have to face there?
5. In what ways was the Great Migration of southern blacks similar to other historical migrations? In what important ways was it unique?
6. After being viciously attacked by a mob in Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today” (p. 389). Why were northern working-class whites so hostile to black migrants?
7. Wilkerson quotes Black Boy in which Richard Wright wrote, on arriving in the North: “I had fled one insecurity and embraced another” (p. 242). What unique challenges did black migrants face in the North? How did these challenges affect the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster?
8. Wilkerson points out that the three most influential figures in jazz were all children of the Great Migration: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. What would American culture look like today if the Great Migration hadn’t happened?
9. What motivated Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster to leave the South? What circumstances and inner drives prompted them to undertake such a difficult and dangerous journey? What would likely have been their fates if they had remained in the South? In what ways did living in the North free them?
10. Near the end of the book, Wilkerson asks: “With all that grew out of the mass movement of people, did the Great Migration achieve the aim of those who willed it? Were the people who left the South—and their families—better off for having done so? Was the loss of what they left behind worth what confronted them in the anonymous cities they fled to?” (p. 528). How does Wilkerson answer these questions?
11. How did the Great Migration change not only the North but also the South? How did the South respond to the mass exodus of cheap black labor?
12. In what ways are current attitudes toward Mexican Americans similar to attitudes toward African Americans expressed by Northerners in The Warmth of Other Suns? For example, the ways working-class Northerners felt that Southern blacks were stealing their jobs.
13. At a neighborhood watch meeting in Chicago’s South Shore, Ida Mae listens to a young state senator named Barack Obama. In what ways is Obama’s presidency a indirect result of the Great Migration?
14. What is the value of Wilkerson basing her research primarily on firsthand, eyewitness accounts, gathered through extensive interviews, of this historical period?
15. Wilkerson writes of her three subjects that “Ida Mae Gladney had the humblest trappings but was perhaps the richest of them all. She had lived the hardest life, been given the least education, seen the worst the South could hurl at her people, and did not let it break her . . . . Her success was spiritual, perhaps the hardest of all to achieve. And because of that, she was the happiest and lived the longest of them all” (p. 532). What attributes allowed Ida Mae Gladney to achieve this happiness and longevity? In what sense might her life, and the lives of George Starling and Robert Foster as well, serve as models for how to persevere and overcome tremendous difficulties?
(For a complete list of available reading group guides, and to sign up for the Reading Group Center enewsletter, visit www.readinggroupcenter.com)
Anonymous
Posted October 7, 2010
You won't read anything like this in any account of U.S. History. Only gain a deeper appreciation of those many emigrants. After reading this book, I am so grateful to my granparents for having the courage to leave the South and try to have a better life. It is almost unbelievable the indignities these people went through. But it is also
encouraging to read about their success as well. This is honest history at it's best. An amazing written work. All I can say is read it. You will think, now I get it.
21 out of 21 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I would love to write a review on this one but frankly, nothing I could say would do it justice. What a wonderful piece of work! I saw Isabel Wilkerson interviewed on Q&A on CSPAN. I enjoy African American History and thought I might give it a try. I broke my rule of buying brand new hardbacks and am I glad I did! I was drawn in immediately and Wilkerson really gets you connected with the people's stories. If you enjoy history from the perspective of those who've experienced it, this is the book for you. I also think it would be a great choice for those who are in more intellectual type book clubs
9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.ReadAllAboutIt
Posted October 6, 2010
I am 20 pages into "TWOOS" and I must say I am so proud of the determination of African Americans who wanted to experience a better life outside the rule of slavery and overt racism. This is a story that must be told so the younger generation (especially AA youth)can become knowledgeable of a piece of history that is rarely told. "TWOOS" reminds me of when I used to sit with my great grandmother and listening to her stories and be in awe of the awesome wisdom and determination of her generation. I agree...everyone needs to know this story and read this book.
7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.mc76NYC
Posted November 2, 2010
I Also Recommend:
This is a well-researched, well-written and important contribution to U.S. History. It is a microcosm of the life of many who have left familiar settings - inside and outside of the United States - to make a better life for their family. A great book.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.MsErlybird
Posted October 21, 2010
...and I Am So Glad that Isabel Wilkerson Wrote this Book! The Great Migration" needs to be told. So many people lived it - and continue to live it - and it has largely been ignored by academia, sociologists, and to an extent, historians. I experienced many "Aha!" moments in recalling the events of the migration of my own family. I cried through a couple of the recollections in the book because they lent a different perspective, bringing a great appreciation of the reasons for the migration. At times I was so wrapped up in the book, I think I was holding my breath!
I am grateful that Ms. Wilkerson wrote this book. I am grateful that she sculpted this human landscape. I am grateful for the thousands of souls who left the comfort (often discomfort) and familiarity of their homes and families in search for something better, something different. Now, I am grateful and respectful for their paving the roads. As a result, the rest of us trod a little easier.
We need to know this story.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Vintagemusic
Posted July 12, 2011
This book exceeded my expectations, and captured my attention from the moment I commenced reading it. Great writing! Perceptive focus on an aspect of American History heretofore, unbeknownst to myself, and perhaps to most history buffs.
Truth-telling at its best! Flawless presentation of painful realities that never made it into any American History books I've ever read. I love the book!
+++++ Plus +++++ rating! It doesn't get any better than this!
VM
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 8, 2011
If you liked The Help you will like this book
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.ZeeQuest
Posted January 26, 2011
For someone who has limited historical knowledge, this book was excellent in bringing awareness to the the monumental African American events of the last 2 centuries. It does so in a chronological fashion, from slavery to Emancipation to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Act and much more. Important facts and events in African American and American history are provided in an extremely engaging account through the stories of 3 people. Being an African immigrant, I have a new found respect for the journey of African Americans in the United States of America.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Intelligent and noteworthy. It was both a heartwarming and heartbreaking history lesson about the migration of African Americans from the South to escape Jim Crow laws. I couldn't put it down...I fell asleep trying to see how the three people turned out. I really liked how she worked President Obama into the story as a point in history..enjoy ya"ll
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Bewilduh
Posted November 24, 2010
This book is incredible. It details the struggles and stife of living in the South as a black person. The stories and events were so exact that often times it was scary. I live in the South, born and raised, so I could really relate to each person in the book. I am to young to have been born in slavery, but growing up in a small town in the south in the early seventies there were people living that still had that Jim Crow mentality. It was something that you got used to. I remember that I didn't even want to move from my hometown, I was so upset. However, when I did move, I never wanted to go back. I have never moved to far away, but the difference in just a few miles made all the difference in my life. I could really see how oppressive and repressed we had been. I have relatives and older people that have told me stories very very similar to what George, Inez, Ida Mae, and Pershing went through. The book also helped me to understand and be more empathetic with older people like my grandmother and understand why our black culture is like it is. This book is wonderful and insightful, I am recommending it to my friends and family!!!!!!It's a book that I definitely be adding to my library.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 9, 2010
Isabel Wilkerson put light on the migration of African American from the South to North. I have always enjoyed learning more about the history of African Americans. After reading this book, I have start talking more to older individuals to hear their personal input on their history. Seniors love to talk and educate anyone who will listen and learn from their experiences in life. They have alot of interesting stories to tell why they made the trip from the South to the North. Infact, many of their stories are similar to the three people Ms. Wilkerson used in this book. I highly recommed anyone to read this book!!!!
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.6823249
Posted May 9, 2011
The story line was great but the author jumped around too much for me. At times while reading this book, I felt I was back in college reading a history text book with a whole lot of facts. The stories about the characters also jump, no chronoligical order. It was our book club selection for the month, otherwise l would have stop reading it after the first couple of chapters
2 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted August 27, 2011
I had high hopes for this book. However, I found it very hard to finish. It became drudgery with repetition, and the "summaries" or whatever they were didn't fit and ruined the great personal stories of the 3 main characters. She tried to mix a doctoral dissertation in with wonderfully told stories without success.
1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.i found the warmth of other suns to be very interestin & (to me) educational. i enjoy readin stories like this & learned alot bout what happened in the past. i felt & understood what Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Startling & Robert Joseph Pershing Foster all went thru. i have relatives who also migrated from the south in the 1920's and wanted 2 ask was it anythin like this 4 them. each cahracter int hse book (and thos ei asked) went thru a different life and came here just bout for the same reasons.
i thought bout the states the people (i asked) came from and how it matched up alot. their family origially all came to be the same ... South or either North Carolina. made me think so thats where alota people from here came from.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 17, 2011
A great piece of work that should be on every high school reading list
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 13, 2011
Although+my+family+migrated+from+the+south+to+the+midwest+to+work+for+the+auto+industry%2C+many+others+left+to+escape+jim+crow.++This+book+details+how+the+great+migration+affected+many.+Very+interesting.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 21, 2011
An immigrant myself, I wanted to know about this new country I now call home. This book opened my eyes and my heart to the struggles of the people who lived here before. I cried with them and celebrated with them. So much has been achieved but we have so much more to learn. An amazing book!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 3, 2011
If the topic is even remotely of interest to you, you owe it to yourself to read this fascinating book. Dr. Wilkerson does a remarkable job of taking the reader to the places Ida Mae, George, and Robert lived, both physically and emotionally and what it was like to them to be hated and relegated to servant status. The book goes into vivid detail about the paths taken both North and West and yes, back to the 'Old Country' - the South, and the challenges encountered upon arrival and return to both. I have a much better understanding of the people whose struggle for equality spanned the course of hundreds of years, some of which were only able to get a glimpse and a slight taste of what many of us have taken for granted all our lives.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 1, 2011
This book draws the reader in from the beginning and is hard to put down once one gets aquainted with the three people Wilkerson follows. The quantity and level of research done is daunting, yet it never becomes a list of facts and events. The portraits of the three central figures are as sharply drawn over the course of the 500 plus pages as I've ever seen--and the sense of each as a full and complete person grows as the book unfolds. I often find fault with volumes like this that reveal history through individual stories, but I found little to fault with this book. It is a masterpiece that lays out the context with as much skill as it draws the portraits of its cntral figures. Oh to be able to write as well as Wilkerson!
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Posted January 24, 2011
This is an incredible book, for any reader insterested in American history. It tells the stories of different people, different journeys, and different outcomes, yet somehow manages to pull them all together. It is not a "Black" book any more than "The Grapes of Wrath" is a "White" book. Its themes of humiliation and loss leading to a desire for a better life are universal. it makes me wish I was ina Book Club so that I could discuss it with others!
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Overview
Winner of 2011 Mark Lynton History Prize
Winner of the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction
One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2010
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of ...