Paula J. Giddings
…[an] extraordinary and evocative work…
The Washington Post
Janet Maslin
…a landmark piece of nonfiction…[Wilkerson] works on a grand, panoramic scale but also on a very intimate one, since this work of living history boils down to the tenderly told stories of three rural Southerners who immigrated to big cities from their hometowns. She winds up with a mesmerizing book that warrants comparison to The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann's study of the Great Migration's early phase, and Common Ground, J. Anthony Lukas's great, close-range look at racial strife in Boston.
The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin was falsely accused of stealing a white man's turkeys and was almost beaten to death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem after learning of the grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster made his trek from Louisiana to California in 1953, embittered by "the absurdity that he was doing surgery for the United States Army and couldn't operate in his own home town." Anchored to these three stories is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively researched study of the "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling, and Pershing settling in new lands, building anew, and often finding that they have not left racism behind. The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate long after the reading is done. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
A landmark piece of nonfiction . . . [Isabel Wilkerson’s] closeness with, and profound affection for, her subjects reflect her deep immersion in their stories and allow the reader to share that connection.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“A brilliant and stirring epic, the first book to cover the full half-century of the Great Migration . . . Wilkerson combines impressive research . . . with great narrative and literary power. Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”—John Stauffer, The Wall Street Journal
“[A] massive and masterly account of the Great Migration . . . a narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future place on Oprah’s couch.”—David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review
“[A] deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book . . . This is narrative nonfiction, lyrical and tragic and fatalist. The story exposes; the story moves; the story ends. What Wilkerson urges, finally, isn’t argument at all; it’s compassion. Hush, and listen.”—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
“Told in a voice that echoes the magic cadences of Toni Morrison or the folk wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston’s collected oral histories, Wilkerson’s book pulls not just the expanse of the migration into focus but its overall impact on politics, literature, music, sports—in the nation and the world.”—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times
“[An] extraordinary and evocative work.”—The Washington Post
“Mesmerizing.”—Chicago Tribune
“Scholarly but very readable, this book, for all its rigor, is so absorbing, it should come with a caveat: Pick it up only when you can lose yourself entirely.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
"[An] indelible and compulsively readable portrait of race, class, and politics in twentieth-century America. History is rarely distilled so finely.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Astonishing . . . Isabel Wilkerson delivers! . . . With the precision of a surgeon, Wilkerson illuminates the stories of bold, faceless African-Americans who transformed cities and industries with their hard work and determination to provide their children with better lives.”—Essence
“Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.”—Toni Morrison
“A sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America’s hidden twenteith-century history. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand the making of our modern nation.”—Tom Brokaw
“A seminal work of narrative nonfiction . . . You will never forget these people.”—Gay Talese
“This book will be long remembered, and savored.”—Jon Meacham
“A masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don’t miss it!”—Cornel West
David Oshinsky
…[a] massive and masterly account of the Great Migration…Based on more than a thousand interviews, written in broad imaginative strokes, this book, at 622 pages, is something of an anomaly in today's shrinking world of nonfiction publishing: a narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future place on Oprah's couch.
The New York Times Book Review
Atlanta Journal Constitution
[The Warmth of Other Suns] power arises from its close attention to intimate details in the lives of regular people…..if you want to learn about what being a migrant felt like, read Wilkerson. Her intimate portraits convey – as no book prior ever has – what the migration meant to those who were a part of it….The Warmth of Other Suns stands as a vital contribution to our understanding of the black American experience and of the unstoppable social movement that shaped modern America.”
Entertainment Weekly
''[Black Southerners] did not cross the turnstiles of customs at Ellis Island. They were already citizens. But where they came from, they were not treated as such,'' writes Isabel Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns, her sprawling and stunning account of the Great Migration, the 55-year stretch (1915–70) during which 6 million black Americans fled the Jim Crow South. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, uses the journeys of three of them — a Mississippi sharecropper, a Louisiana doctor, and a Florida laborer — to etch an indelible and compulsively readable portrait of race, class, and politics in 20th-century America. History is rarely distilled so finely.” Grade: A
JANUARY 2012 - AudioFile
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s extraordinary history of the twentieth-century migration of Southern black citizens to Northern and Western cities is narrated in standard American English by Robin Miles. But this is a book rich in dialogue. In the melted-butter drawls of rural Southern sharecroppers and in the crisp accents of Northern factory workers, Miles captures the voices of Black America. Through them, she gives voice to the plight of black Americans who found the courage and opportunity to flee Jim Crow laws in the South and embark on an almost invisible migration that changed the face of a country forever. Wilkerson’s highly acclaimed book is hard to put down, and Miles’s interpretation makes it almost impossible. S.K.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine