The Warmth of Other Suns

While many people are reading, Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of our Discontent, I’m a ways behind the reading curve. I just finished reading this morning her earlier book “The Warmth of Other Suns.” As I read the final paragraph of her epilogue, I felt like I had been given a beautiful gift from the author in the form of her accounting of the Great Migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South to the North. The story is told through the lives of 3 of those millions who, not knowing what the future would bring, chose to make the journey. Each of her subjects is from a different state in the South and each travels to a different city in the North where they recast their lives in different ways. Wilkerson writes unflinchingly of their journeys, but with obvious sympathy for her 3 protagonists and the millions of others who made a similar decision to migrate to the “Warmth of Other Suns” and in doing so collectively transformed the North and the South. Obviously, if you haven’t read this book, I recommend it. It won’t disappoint.