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

Sep 08, 2011 Melissa rated it really liked it

Shelves: america, race-class-justice, constant-reader, migration

I found this book very absorbing, even though the onset of work in the fall meant I had to put it aside for far too long.

The section on migration to Milwaukee I found especially fascinating. I grew up in a small town just outside that city, a sleepy little place fast becoming a bedroom suburb. We had been there only a few years when a strange rumor swept up and down our dead-end road -- a Black family had bought the house for sale down on the corner and would be moving in soon!

There was some ex ...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Ruth rated it really liked it

What is masterful about this book is how it draws you in like a novel. I almost wasn't going to read it, afraid it would be another earnest sociological study with all the juice sucked out of it. What's disturbing to me, is how much of it was around into the 1950's. I was born in 1935. I graduated from high school in 1953. I was living in the San Fernando Valley, which she says did a good job of keeping blacks out.

Why didn't I know any of this? I must have been walking around in my own safe whit ...more

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May 14, 2013 spoko rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, history, race

It was an interesting choice, tying such a huge historical movement to just three individual stories. There were some real advantages--hearing about the specifics of each person's leaving day, for instance, really brought home what a difficult endeavor it was, and why. But I did wish for a little more breadth, even if it had come at the expense of some depth. That turned out to be a fairly minor issue, though, because Wilkerson did a great job extrapolating/expanding from these individuals' stor ...more

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Sep 18, 2022 Laurel Bradshaw rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, history, 20th-century, audiobook, social-conditions, chunky-plus-600, color-rating-blue, perspectives-book-club, 2022-random-lists

This has a much more upbeat feel than her book "Caste." Yes, she talks about the prejudice, and the lynchings, and the injustice and heartbreak, but over all, the focus is on how much things changed in the last 100 years. These people sought better lives, and for the most part, they found it. While we know that we still have work to do, sometimes it is good to remind ourselves how much things have changed. As MLK said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” So this This has a much more upbeat feel than her book "Caste." Yes, she talks about the prejudice, and the lynchings, and the injustice and heartbreak, but over all, the focus is on how much things changed in the last 100 years. These people sought better lives, and for the most part, they found it. While we know that we still have work to do, sometimes it is good to remind ourselves how much things have changed. As MLK said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” So this book left me feeling hopeful, rather than depressed like "Caste" did. I liked the stories of the three people she followed - it makes it much more personal - but at the same time she is presenting a microcosm that doesn't reflect the deep complexity of experience of being African American. This gets a blue rating from me, rather than purple, because it got very repetitious at times. And it was confusing how she presented parallel stories, rather than a more chronological approach, hopping back and forth in time. But over all, I liked it very much.

Description: 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. ...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Temple Dog rated it really liked it

This was an extraordinary read. Uncompromising in its candor, yet emotionally and psychologically tender.

Wilkerson weaves the stories of three geographically and chronologically separate characters to create a beautifully crafted tale of oppression, courage and desire to succeed.

Each narrative delicately and artistically unfolds until the reader is captivated and sometimes appalled by history and in many cases the hypocrisy of America's democratic facade post Emancipation Proclamation.

I believe ...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Sara rated it really liked it

Overwhelming experience. The author turns all her research, interviews and most of all, people, into a living breathing narrative of social history. A very important book. Very.

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