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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Start date: May 1, 2024

Finish date: May 31, 2024

Discussion: Non-Fiction Classics

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What Members Thought

Feb 27, 2021 Christine PNW rated it it was amazing

5 stars. 100 stars.

All the stars. Left me gutted and amazed and grieving.

Full review:

I read this for Black History Month, along with James Baldwin's book of essays The Fire Next Time. I started by listening to the audiobook, but ultimately transitioned to the kindle book because that is a better format for me when I want to absorb material. I didn't start the book over, but I'm sure that I will read it again from the beginning.

Let me begin by saying that I would encourage every person alive to r 5 stars. 100 stars.

All the stars. Left me gutted and amazed and grieving.

Full review:

I read this for Black History Month, along with James Baldwin's book of essays The Fire Next Time. I started by listening to the audiobook, but ultimately transitioned to the kindle book because that is a better format for me when I want to absorb material. I didn't start the book over, but I'm sure that I will read it again from the beginning.

Let me begin by saying that I would encourage every person alive to read this book, with specific emphasis on white Americans. Those of us who live in the areas of the country that are not the South, and that never had Jim Crow laws may have a tendency to pat ourselves on the back a little bit too much over our communities being better and more welcoming to Black Americans. While it may be true that our laws did not enshrine brutality in the same way that the laws of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida did, there was no paradise for the families that fled Jim Crow to the North, the West and the East, where our communities intentionally confined their families to "black belts" and engaged in the most racist, appalling behavior when they sought to break free from the confines that we were attempting to establish for them there.

(And, to be honest, as a long time Oregonian, I am forced to acknowledge that the laws of my state did, in fact, enshrine discrimination in our Constitution until 1926, when the exclusion contained in the Constitution was repealed, with 37% of Oregonians voting to retain it, and in 2002, when a ballot initiative removed the racist language from the Constitution all together, with a vote in which 27% of Oregonians opposed the measure)

This was one of the most compelling - if not the MOST compelling - pieces of historical non-fiction that I have ever read. Although I knew that George Starling, Robert Foster and Ida Mae Gladney must be deceased, their deaths made me cry. The bravery and fortitude that they - and millions of other unnamed individuals like them - demonstrated in the face of a life of what felt, reading, like endless hardships to be overcome, left me gutted and grieving. The potential that this country has wasted through our obsession with oppression is shameful.

The amount of blood and treasure that was stolen from the Black community by white America reverberates still. Their health outcomes, their reduced ability to transfer inter-generational wealth, the lower market value of their homes, continue to impact their present - and their futures - even today.

I'm going to end this review with two quotes:

Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching, for such alleged crimes as “stealing hogs, horse-stealing, poisoning mules, jumping labor contract, suspected of killing cattle, boastful remarks” or “trying to act like a white person.” Sixty-six were killed after being accused of “insult to a white person.” One was killed for stealing seventy-five cents. page 53.

I can conceive of no Negro native to this country who has not, by the age of puberty, been irreparably scarred by the conditions of his life.… The wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive. — JAMES BALDWIN, Notes of a Native Son ...more

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Feb 05, 2021 Sarah rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this long book. It was almost 550 pages, but it didn't drag. I liked the author's method of picking three different folks, in differing circumstances, at different times, going to different places. I was emotionally attached and involved with all three, which made it an easy read for a serious history text. The hard part is the facts of racism here in the US. Its so much easier to say to yourself, well, I'm a good person who treats people fairly - rather than try to figure out ...more

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