Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

The anthrax, like the reactivation of the human pathogens of hatred and tribalism in this evolving century, had never died. It lay in wait, sleeping, until extreme circumstances brought it to the surface and back to life.

I cannot tell you how meaningful this chapter is to me or how much work went into it. Before I had written a single word, I knew that the story of anthrax resurfacing in the Siberian tundra would be the opening. I happened to hear a news brief in the summer of 2016, just a line or two, about a heatwave that was melting the Russian permafrost, exposing anthrax that had been dormant since World War II and was sickening the local people. It sounded otherworldly to me. I instantly saw it as an allegory for the resurgence of hatreds and hostilities in the American election that year and the dangers facing humanity and the planet itself. I had only a few key words to go on as I began my research into exactly what happened that summer in Siberia. I had to research the history, people and geology of a part of Russia I hadn't known existed. I had to research the mechanisms of anthrax, the symptoms of exposure, the effects on the local people. I had to track down accounts of the massive undertaking of relocating the villagers and trying to dispose of the pathogen, all of which, in the alchemy of narrative, led me to research silent earthquakes and the means of detecting them. I ended up doing all of this just for a few paragraphs in a single chapter. The anthrax story is the kind of thing that might initially seem extraneous, that might puzzle a few readers, while intriguing others, but it was central to the mission of the book, of awakening us to what we otherwise might not see. And I am grateful that so many people had faith in the writing to keep turning the pages to see how it all comes together.