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

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

by Isabel Wilkerson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

23,808 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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National Book Critics Circle AwardWinner, 2010

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE LAST 30 YEARS

“A brilliant and stirring epic . . . 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

“What she’s done with these oral histories is stow memory in amber.”—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times

WINNER: The Mark Lynton History Prize • The Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize • The Hurston-Wright Award for Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • NAACP Image Award for Best Literary Debut • Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize

FINALIST: The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Dayton Literary Peace Prize

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • USA Today • Publishers Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • Salon • Newsday • The Daily Beast

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • The Washington Post • The Economist •Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Christian Science Monitor

In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970.

Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.

From the Publisher

One of the New York Times’s 5 best books of the 21st century

San Francisco Examiner says sings a song of redemptive glory

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A Look Inside The Warmth of Other Suns

The author's father as a Tuskegee Airman
George Starling as a young man
The author's mother at Meridian Hill
The author’s mother at Howard University with friends
A migrant man studying a map
A migrant man packing his suitcase
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney as a young woman
Robert Joseph Pershing Foster as a young physician

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

In The Warmth of Other Suns Wilkerson has composed a masterpiece of narrative journalism on a subject vital to our national identity, as compelling as it is heartbreaking and hopeful. Critics, however, were less certain about whether Wilkerson has written a definitive history of the Great Migration. Several reviewers saw the book as an important corrective to previous scholarship on the Migration that too often grouped African Americans into a voiceless mass, that focused exclusively on the negative consequences of their move to Northern urban centers, and that often emphasized economic and sociological explanations at the expense of the personal. Other critics felt that Wilkerson could have taken advantage of more of this scholarship, even if it was sometimes flawed, and could have taken into account larger structural influences. But The Warmth of Other Suns is an impressive achievement--a fresh, rich look at an important chapter in American history.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* From the early twentieth century through its midpoint, some six million black southerners relocated themselves, their labor, and their lives, to the North, changing the course of civil, social, and economic life in the U.S. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson offers a broad and penetrating look at the Great Migration, a movement without leaders or precedent. Drawing on interviews and archival research, Wilkerson focuses on three individuals with varying reasons for leaving the South—the relentless poverty of sharecropping with few other opportunities, escalating racial violence, and greater social and economic prospects in the North. She traces their particular life stories, the sometimes furtive leave-takings; the uncertainties they faced in Chicago, New York, and L.A.; and the excitement and longing for freer, more prosperous lives. She contrasts their hopes and aspirations with the realities of life in northern cities when the jobs eventually evaporated from the inner cities and new challenges arose. Wilkerson intersperses historical detail of the broader movement and the sparks that set off the civil rights era; challenging racial restrictions in the North and South; and the changing dynamics of race, class, geography, politics, and economics. A sweeping and stunning look at a watershed event in U.S. history. --Vanessa Bush

Review

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • USA Today • O: The Oprah Magazine • Publishers Weekly • Salon • Newsday • The Daily Beast

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • The Washington Post • The Economist • Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Christian Science Monitor

MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER•HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER •DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST

“A landmark piece of nonfiction . . . sure to hold many surprises for readers of any race or experience….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….[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

“The Warmth of Other Suns is 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.” —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.” —The New York Times Book Review (Cover Review)

“[A] deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book. . . .Wilkerson has taken on one of the most important demographic upheavals of the past century—a phenomenon whose dimensions and significance have eluded many a scholar—and told it through the lives of three people no one has ever heard of….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

"The Warmth of Other Suns is epic in its reach and in its structure. 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." —Los Angeles Times

“One of the most lyrical and important books of the season." —Boston Globe

“[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 20th-century America. History is rarely distilled so finely.” —Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)

“An astonishing work. . . . 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

“Isabel Wilkerson’s majestic The Warmth of Other Suns shows that not everyone bloomed, but the migrants—Wilkerson prefers to think of them as domestic immigrants—remade the entire country, North and South. It’s a monumental job of writing and reporting that lives up to its subtitle: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” —USA Today

“[A] sweeping history of the Great Migration. . . . The Warmth of Other Suns builds upon such purely academic works to make the migrant experience both accessible and emotionally compelling.” —NPR.org

“The Warmth of Other Suns is a beautifully written, in-depth analysis of what Wilkerson calls “one of the most underreported stories of the 20th century. . . A masterpiece that sheds light on a significant development in our nation’s history.” —The San Jose Mercury News

“The Warmth of Other Suns is a beautifully written book that, once begun, is nearly impossible to put aside. It is an unforgettable combination of tragedy and inspiration, and gripping subject matter and characters in a writing style that grabs the reader on Page 1 and never let’s go. . . . Woven into the tapestry of [three individuals] lives, in prose that is sweet to savor, Wilkerson tells the larger story, the general situation of life in the South for blacks. . . . If you read one only one book about history this year, read this. If you read only one book about African Americans this year, read this. If you read only one book this year, read this.” —The Free Lance Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

"Atruly auspicious debut. . . . The author deftly intersperses [her characters'] stories with short vignettes about other individuals and consistently provides the bigger picture without interrupting the flow of the narrative…Wilkerson’s focus on the personal aspect lends her book a markedly different, more accessible tone. Her powerful storytelling style, as well, gives this decades-spanning history a welcome novelistic flavor. An impressive take on the Great Migration." —Kirkus, Starred Review

“[A] magnificent, extensively researched study of the great migration… 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.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Not since Alex Haley’s Roots has there been a history of equal literary quality where the writing surmounts the rhythmic soul of fiction, where the writer’s voice sings a song of redemptive glory as true as Faulkner’s southern cantatas.” —The San Francisco Examiner

“Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.” —Toni Morrison

“The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America’s hidden 20th century history - the long and difficult trek of Southern blacks to the northern and western cities. 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

“With compelling prose and considered analysis, Isabel Wilkerson has given us alandmark portrait of one of the most significant yet little-noted shifts in American history: the migration of African-Americans from the Jim Crow South to the cities of the North and West. It is a complicated tale, with an infinity of implications for questions of race, power, politics, religion, and class—implications that are unfolding even now. This book will be long remembered, and savored.” —Jon Meacham

“Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is an American masterpiece, a stupendous literary success that channels the social sciences as iconic biography in order to tell a vast story of a people's reinvention of itself and of a nation—the first complete history of the Great Black Migration from start to finish, north, east, west.” —David Levering Lewis

“Isabel Wilkerson’s book is amasterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don’t miss it!” —Cornel West

About the Author

Isabel Wilkerson won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her reporting as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. The award made her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. She won the George Polk Award for her coverage of the Midwest and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared. This is her first book.

A voice from everywhere and nowhere, with credits from Broadway to soaps, Shakespeare to Law & Order, Robin Miles knows audiobooks from both sides of the glass. For her gripping narration, authentic characters, impressive accents, and characters in varied genres, AudioFile named her “a performer who never disappoints.” Her 200+ titles have won multiple Bests of the Year, Earphones, an Audie award and Grammy nomination. She owns production/teaching studio Voxpertise™ and holds a BA and MFA from Yale.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the Land of the Forefathers

Our mattresses were made

of corn shucks

and soft gray Spanish moss

that hung from the trees. . . .

From the swamps

we got soup turtles

and baby alligators

and from the woods

we got raccoon,

rabbit and possum.

—Mahalia Jackson, Movin’ On Up

Leaving

This land is first and foremost

his handiwork.

It was he who brought order

out of primeval wilderness . . .

Wherever one looks in this land,

whatever one sees that is the work of man,

was erected by the toiling

straining bodies of blacks.

—David L. Cohn, God Shakes Creation

They fly from the land that bore them.

—W. H. Stillwell

1

Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Late October 1937

ida mae brandon gladney

the night clouds were closing in on the salt licks east of the oxbow lakes along the folds in the earth beyond the Yalobusha River. The cotton was at last cleared from the field. Ida Mae tried now to get the children ready and to gather the clothes and quilts and somehow keep her mind off the churning within her. She had sold off the turkeys and doled out in secret the old stools, the wash pots, the tin tub, the bed pallets. Her husband was settling with Mr. Edd over the worth of a year’s labor, and she did not know what would come of it. None of them had been on a train before—not unless you counted the clattering local from Bacon Switch to Okolona, where, “by the time you sit down, you there,” as Ida Mae put it. None of them had been out of Mississippi. Or Chickasaw County, for that matter.

There was no explaining to little James and Velma the stuffed bags and chaos and all that was at stake or why they had to put on their shoes and not cry and bring undue attention from anyone who might happen to see them leaving. Things had to look normal, like any other time they might ride into town, which was rare enough to begin with.

Velma was six. She sat with her ankles crossed and three braids in her hair and did what she was told. James was too little to understand. He was three. He was upset at the commotion. Hold still now, James. Lemme put your shoes on, Ida Mae told him. James wriggled and kicked. He did not like shoes. He ran free in the field. What were these things? He did not like them on his feet. So Ida Mae let him go barefoot.

Miss Theenie stood watching. One by one, her children had left her and gone up north. Sam and Cleve to Ohio. Josie to Syracuse. Irene to Milwaukee. Now the man Miss Theenie had tried to keep Ida Mae from marrying in the first place was taking her away, too. Miss Theenie had no choice but to accept it and let Ida Mae and the grandchildren go for good. Miss Theenie drew them close to her, as she always did whenever anyone was leaving. She had them bow their heads. She whispered a prayer that her daughter and her daughter’s family be protected on the long journey ahead in the Jim Crow car.

“May the Lord be the first in the car,” she prayed, “and the last out.”

When the time had come, Ida Mae and little James and Velma and all that they could carry were loaded into a brother-in-law’s truck, and the three of them went to meet Ida Mae’s husband at the train depot in Okolona for the night ride out of the bottomland.

2

Wildwood, Florida, April 14, 1945

george swanson starling

a man named roscoe colton gave Lil George Starling a ride in his pickup truck to the train station in Wildwood through the fruit-bearing scrubland of central Florida. And Schoolboy, as the toothless orange pickers mockingly called him, boarded the Silver Meteor pointing north.

A railing divided the stairs onto the train, one side of the railing for white passengers, the other for colored, so the soles of their shoes would not touch the same stair. He boarded on the colored side of the railing, a final reminder from the place of his birth of the absurdity of the world he was leaving.

He was getting out alive. So he didn’t let it bother him. “I got on the car where they told me to get on,” he said years later.

He hadn’t had time to bid farewell to everyone he wanted to. He stopped to say good-bye to Rachel Jackson, who owned a little café up on what they called the Avenue and the few others he could safely get to in the little time he had. He figured everybody in Egypt town, the colored section of Eustis, probably knew he was leaving before he had climbed onto the train, small as the town was and as much as people talked.

It was a clear afternoon in the middle of April. He folded his tall frame into the hard surface of the seat, his knees knocking against the seat back in front of him. He was packed into the Jim Crow car, where the railroad stored the luggage, when the train pulled away at last. He was on the run, and he wouldn’t rest easy until he was out of range of Lake County, beyond the reach of the grove owners whose invisible laws he had broken.

The train rumbled past the forest of citrus trees that he had climbed since he was a boy and that he had tried to wrestle some dignity out of and, for a time, had. They could have their trees. He wasn’t going to lose his life over them. He had come close enough as it was.

He had lived up to his family’s accidental surname. Starling. Distant cousin to the mockingbird. He had spoken up about what he had seen in the world he was born into, like the starling that sang Mozart’s own music back to him or the starling out of Shakespeare that tormented the king by speaking the name of Mortimer. Only, George was paying the price for tormenting the ruling class that owned the citrus groves. There was no place in the Jim Crow South for a colored starling like him.

He didn’t know what he would do once he got to New York or what his life would be. He didn’t know how long it would take before he could send for Inez. His wife was mad right now, but she’d get over it once he got her there. At least that’s what he told himself. He turned his face to the North and sat with his back to Florida.

Leaving as he did, he figured he would never set foot in Eustis again for as long as he lived. And as he settled in for the twenty-three-hour train ride up the coast of the Atlantic, he had no desire to have anything to do with the town he grew up in, the state of Florida, or the South as a whole, for that matter.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003EY7JGM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 7, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2.2 MB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 637 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679604075
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1160L

Best Sellers Rank: #10,756 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2 in African American Studies
- #2 in Black & African American History (Books)
- #2 in History of Race & Ethnicity

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Isabel Wilkerson

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Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author the critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, tells the story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize and was shortlisted for both the Pen-Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

WARMTH was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times' 10 Best Books of the Year, Amazon's 5 Best Books of the Year and Best of the Year lists in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Economist, among others. In 2019, TIME Magazine named Warmth to its list of the10 best books of the decade.

Her second book, CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents, explores the unrecognized hierarchy in America, its history and its consequences. Caste became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, was the 2020 summer/fall selection for Oprah’s Book Club and was longlisted for the National Book Award. It was named to more best of the year lists than any other work of nonfiction. TIME named it the No. 1 nonfiction book of 2020. Publishers Marketplace named it the book of the year across all genres. In 2021, it was the most borrowed nonfiction library book in the United States, according to Quartz Magazine.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African-American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal for "championing the stories of an unsung history."

She has appeared on national programs such as "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," CBS's "60 Minutes," NBC's "Nightly News," "The PBS News Hour," MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” NPR's "On Being with Krista Tippett," the BBC and others. She has taught at Princeton, Emory and Boston universities and has lectured at more than 200 other colleges and universities across the U.S. and in Europe and Asia.

Follow @isabelwilkerson on Instagram and Threads. Follow her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/IsabelWilkersonWriter/

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Customers find this book fascinating and well-written, describing it as a meticulous scholarly work that helps readers better understand American history. They appreciate the character development, particularly the personal stories of the three main characters, and the heartwarming portrayal of human strength in the face of adversity. The narrative quality receives mixed reactions, with some finding it compelling while others note it can be somewhat repetitive.

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Readability Enlightened Writing quality Character development Heartwarming Heartbreaking Narrative quality

1,782 customers mention "Readability"1,768 positive14 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as one of the best pieces of narrative non-fiction and an eye-opening narrative.

"...Ms. Wilkerson's exemplary storytelling and years of interviews and research and her own history come together to tell this incredible story...." Read more

"...for presenting American history in a palatable form which is both entertaining and educational...." Read more

"...and created a brilliantly cohesive, organized account that is entertaining to read and leaves one feeling educated on the subject...." Read more

"...Its historical depth, human stories, and emotional weight make it a standout. It’s a testament to resilience I won’t soon forget." Read more

1,512 customers mention "Enlightened"1,492 positive20 negative

Customers find the book enlightening, praising its extensive research and well-presented information, which helps them better understand American history.

"...Ms. Wilkerson's exemplary storytelling and years of interviews and research and her own history come together to tell this incredible story...." Read more

"Isabel Wilkerson has written an eye-opening book about the transition from slaves to free men and women effectuated by pulling up stakes and..." Read more

"...The historical accounts are validated by American historical archives and told by three generations of black families who participated in the exodus...." Read more

"...right handful of intriguing subjects to focus on, and then researching them so thoroughly that the reader actually comes to feel they've known each..." Read more

802 customers mention "Writing quality"745 positive57 negative

Customers praise the writing quality of the book, describing it as beautifully told and immensely readable.

"...The book is well-written and incredibly insightful...." Read more

"...The writing is beautiful, and the history is told in such a human and meaningful way. I highly recommend it." Read more

"The Warmth of Other Suns is a brilliantly written compilation of three personal accounts through the Great Migration...." Read more

"A real page turner, I just couldn’t put the book down. Beautifully written and very enlightening. Highly recommend it to everyone." Read more

223 customers mention "Character development"207 positive16 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, particularly enjoying the personal stories of the three main characters and the narrative accounts of real people.

"...It is a amazing achievement about real heros, packed with raw history...." Read more

"...make their way in the new world Wilkerson, with sensitivity and attention to detail shows us how these migrants changed America, and how the North..." Read more

"...It's a breath of pure air: human, humane, insightful, honest, empathetic, and---beautiful!" Read more

"...not only examines the stories in great detail, but she gets into the psyche of the characters which humanizes them and makes the story so personal..." Read more

211 customers mention "Heartwarming"206 positive5 negative

Customers find the book heartwarming, praising its portrayal of incredible courage and the towering strength of the human spirit, while bringing to life the real struggles of those who migrated.

"...Yet what struck me most was their courage to leave the South, seeking freedom in a country that should have been theirs all along. “..." Read more

"...It is a tale of heroism, hope and courage describing the exodus and resettlement of Black Americans escaping Jim Crow for a better life in their own..." Read more

"...It's a monument to the resilience of the human spirit and a crucial piece of our national story that deserves to be widely known and understood." Read more

"...She brings in a deep sense of humanity with their blessings, their talents, their faults and shortcomings...." Read more

183 customers mention "Heartbreaking"132 positive51 negative

Customers find the book heart wrenching, with one customer noting it shares the harsh realities of life without easy emotionalism, helping readers understand the emotional weight of the narrative.

"...Its historical depth, human stories, and emotional weight make it a standout. It’s a testament to resilience I won’t soon forget." Read more

"...This book contained joy, sorrow, pain, success and endurances and I thank this author for her research-- I am glad I finally got to it." Read more

"...This is inhuman. I’m a menace to anybody driving. I’m a menace to myself and to the public, driving as tired as I am.”..." Read more

"...The struggle of Black Americans is unique and painful to watch, from Emmett Till and so many before him, to George Floyd, yet so many of the people..." Read more

165 customers mention "Narrative quality"110 positive55 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the narrative quality of the book, with some finding it compelling and full of individual and family journeys, while others note it can be somewhat repetitive.

"The book reads like a novel, deftly intertwining three disparate lives to illuminate one of the largest and least discussed migrations in modern..." Read more

"...This aspect of the book is strangely repetitive and far less instructive...." Read more

"...Their families were more stable, often included 2 parents and have been able to avoid debt (as of the time this was written)...." Read more

"...These personal stories are not only compelling but truly unforgettable...." Read more

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Sasha Lauren, Author
Historic masterpiece! Well done!
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2022
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

This book is a meticulously researched saga of the Great Migration of African Americans in the Jim Crow South to the West and North. The narrative follows three brave individuals on their journeys. It is a amazing achievement about real heros, packed with raw history.

I'm at a loss as to how to write a review worthy of this masterpiece. Ms. Wilkerson's exemplary storytelling and years of interviews and research and her own history come together to tell this incredible story. She writes about the best and worst of humanity from punishing lynchings to unyielding courage and perseverence of the oppressed.

Here are a few of the many passages that stayed with me.

"A series of unpredictable events and frustrations led to the decisions of Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster to leave the South for good. Their decisions were separate and distinct from anything in the outside world except that they were joining a road already plied decades before by people as discontented as themselves. A thousand hurts and killed wishes led to a final determination by each fed-up individual on the verge of departure, which, added to millions of others, made up what could be called a migration."

"Any migration takes some measure of energy, planning, and forethought. It requires not only the desire for something better but the willingness to act on that desire to achieve it. Thus the people who undertake such a journey are more likely to be either among the better educated of their homes of origin or those most motivated to make it in the New World, researchers have found."

"Contrary to modern-day assumptions, for much of the history of the United States—from the Draft Riots of the 1860s to the violence over desegregation a century later—riots were often carried out by disaffected whites against groups perceived as threats to their survival. Thus riots would become to the North what lynchings were to the South, each a display of uncontained rage by put-upon people directed toward the scapegoats of their condition.

Nearly every big northern city experienced one or more during the twentieth century. Each outbreak pitted two groups that had more in common with each other than either of them realized. Both sides were made up of rural and small-town people who had traveled far in search of the American Dream, both relegated to the worst jobs by industrialists who pitted one group against the other. Each side was struggling to raise its families in a cold, fast, alien place far from their homelands and looked down upon by the earlier, more sophisticated arrivals. They were essentially the same people except for the color of their skin, and many of them arrived into these anonymous receiving stations at around the same time, one set against the other and unable to see the commonality of their mutual plight."

In the following, Robert Pershing Foster tries to get a hotel room to rest in New Mexico on his long drive to California:

"He replayed the rejections in his mind as he drove the few yards to the next motel. Maybe he hadn’t explained himself well enough. Maybe it wasn’t clear how far he had driven. Maybe he should let them know he saw through them, after all those years in the South. He always prepared a script when he spoke to a white person. Now he debated with himself as to what he should say.

He didn’t want to make a case of it. He never intended to march over Jim Crow or try to integrate anybody’s motel. He didn’t like being where he wasn’t wanted. And yet here he was, needing something he couldn’t have. He debated whether he should speak his mind, protect himself from rejection, say it before they could say it. He approached the next exchange as if it were a job interview. Years later he would practically refer to it as such. He rehearsed his delivery and tightened his lines. “It would have been opening-night jitters if it was theater,” he would later say.

He pulled into the lot. There was nobody out there but him, and he was the only one driving up to get a room. He walked inside. His voice was about to break as he made his case.

“I’m looking for a room,” he began. “Now, if it’s your policy not to rent to colored people, let me know now so I don’t keep getting insulted.”

A white woman in her fifties stood on the other side of the front desk. She had a kind face, and he found it reassuring. And so he continued.

“It’s a shame that they would do a person like this,” he said. “I’m no robber. I’ve got no weapons. I’m not a thief. I’m a medical doctor. I’m a captain that just left Austria, which was Salzburg. And the German Army was just outside of Vienna. If there had been a conflict, I would have been protecting you. I would not do people the way I’ve been treated here.”

It was the most he’d gotten to say all night, and so he went on with his delivery more determinedly than before. “I have money to pay for my services,” he said. “Now, if you don’t rent to colored people, let me know so I can go on to California. This is inhuman. I’m a menace to anybody driving. I’m a menace to myself and to the public, driving as tired as I am.”

She listened, and she let him make his case. She didn’t talk about mistaken vacancy signs or just-rented rooms. She didn’t cut him off. She listened, and that gave him hope.

“One minute, Doctor,” she said, turning and heading toward a back office.

His heart raced as he watched her walk to the back. He could see her consulting with a man through the glass window facing the front desk, deciding in that instant his fate and his worth. They discussed it for some time and came out together. The husband did the talking. He had a kind, sad face. Robert held his breath. “We’re from Illinois,” the husband said. “We don’t share the opinion of the people in this area. But if we take you in, the rest of the motel owners will ostracize us. We just can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

Wilkerson wrote this about Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance:

“The basic collapse of all organized efforts to exclude Negroes from Harlem was the inability of any group to gain total and unified support of all white property owners in the neighborhood,” Osofsky wrote. “Landlords forming associations by blocks had a difficult time keeping people on individual streets united.”

The free-spirited individualism of immigrants and newcomers seeking their fortune in the biggest city in the country thus worked to the benefit of colored people needing housing in Harlem. It opened up a place that surely would have remained closed in the straitjacketed culture of the South.

By the 1940s, when George Starling arrived, Harlem was a mature and well-established capital of black cultural life, having peaked with the Harlem Renaissance, plunged into Depression after the 1929 stock market crash, climbed back to life during World War II, and, unbeknownst to the thousands still arriving from Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia, not to mention Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean when George got there, was at that precise moment as rollickingly magical as it was ever likely to be.

Seventh Avenue was the Champs-Élysées, a boulevard wide and ready for any excuse for a parade, whether the marches of the minister Father Divine or several thousand Elks in their capes and batons, and, on Sunday afternoons, the singular spectacle called The Stroll. It was where the people who had been laundresses, bellmen, and mill hands in the South dressed up as they saw themselves to be—the men in frock coats and monocles, the women in fox stoles and bonnets with ostrich feathers, the “servants of the rich Park and Fifth Avenue families” wearing “hand-me-downs from their employers,” all meant to evoke startled whispers from the crowd on the sidewalk: “My Gawd, did you see that hat?”

Virtually every black luminary was living within blocks of the others in the elevator buildings and lace-curtained brownstones up on Sugar Hill, from Langston Hughes to Thurgood Marshall to Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and W. E. B. Du Bois, on and off, to Richard Wright, who had now outgrown even Chicago, and his friend and protégé Ralph Ellison, who actually lived in Washington Heights but said it was close enough to be Harlem and pretty much considered it so."

If I were to approach reading this book again for the first time, I would slow down and savor it. I might expect to read it over a period of several months instead of over a week as I did. There is so much to take in. I rushed it.

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Michael S. Cohen, O. D.
Every American Should Read This Book
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Isabel Wilkerson has written an eye-opening book about the transition from slaves to free men and women effectuated by pulling up stakes and relocating to distant parts of the United States. The book is well-written and incredibly insightful. It follows the lives of three southern-born individuals as they make the decision to leave their place of birth and move their tents to the promised land of northern and western cities in America. The book is well-researched and fully packed with information about the migration of the children of slaves.

My fore-bearers emigrated to America from Lithuania. They worked very hard to make the transition from pariahs to valuable contributors to their adoptive country. All of their grandchildren became doctors, lawyers, college professors, and social workers. They all raised up beautiful families. The Warmth of Other Suns explains very well what it took for our fore-bearers to accomplish all that they succeeded in doing. Read this book! You won’t be sorry you took the time to do so!

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Tony Mirabel
A well documented account of the Black Exodus from the Jim Crow South
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Isabel Wilkerson presents a chronological account of the over 6 million black people who fled the oppression of the Jim Crow south, to the northern states; ninety percent who were descendants of slaves and leaving the only home they had ever known. The historical accounts are validated by American historical archives and told by three generations of black families who participated in the exodus. The time period of the exodus was 1916-1970; which would be an opportune time for the first wave of migrants to fill the labor shortage caused by world war I. The southern blacks were no strangers to hard work, as their predecessors built the American economy under the most labor intensive conditions during the antebellum south era. The opportunities in the north, far surpassed what they left behind in the south, but not without complications. The north would present a more passive form of racism where black people were regulated to the most substandard living and work conditions; even lower than newly arrived European ethnic minorities. During WWI , the job opportunities were in the urban industrial areas and would eventually define the demographic disbursement of black people in these United States of America. The war effort shows 13% of the WWI fighting force were comprised of black men who volunteered at such a high rate that they stopped accepting black recruits "Because the black quota had been met" This is not to mention the "Golden 14" The first black women to serve in the United States Navy during world war I. Consider the patriotism of black people, even though they made up only 10% of the entire American population and were treated better in Europe than in their own country. This historical account has put into perspective the demographic make up of black people in America and is unintentionally revealing of racist policies which continue to subjugate black people to the lowest rung of society in terms of economic opportunity and quality of life. I thank Wilkerson for presenting American history in a palatable form which is both entertaining and educational. I recommend this book for every American who can read and is interested in hearing the other side of the same story.

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Alejandra Orozco
Ilustrador
Reviewed in Mexico on December 8, 2017
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

Aún me queda un poco para terminar el libro, pero hasta ahora me ha gustado, la narración de las historias que se entrelazan para dibujar la historia de las migraciones internas, el racismo, la forma de vivir en el sur durante varias generaciones descendientes de esclavos. Me gusta porque los datos no están uno tras otro, sino que se entremezclan en las historias y anécdotas de los personajes que los llegas a sentir como si fueran tus vecinos.

Altamente recomendable.

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gerardpeter
Elegy to a Forgotten Generation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2025
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Over the course of six decades in the 20th century 6 million black Americans left the South of the United States to settle the cities of the North and West. The Great Migration was greater in numbers and equal in significance to any other population movement in America’s history. It has received far less attention than a handful of 17th century pilgrims, yet it reshaped America. This fantastic book tells that story through the eyes of the migrants themselves. The author has a deeply personal connection to it – her own parents made that journey.

She interviewed over a thousand people in the course of her research, The narrative’s focus is on three of them. This is the story of their lives. Ida Mae left Mississippi in 1937 bound for Chicago. George fled Florida in 1945 and settled in Harlem, in 1953 Robert drove from Louisiana across America to Los Angeles. They tell us why they decided to go, how they left, what they encountered when they arrived and how their lives evolved. They took their destiny into their own hands out of the grasp of Jim Crow. They decided for themselves. Not all their decisions were perhaps the best but none regretted leaving the South. What lives they lived were the lives they made.

A common thesis, that still persists, asserts that the surge of migration took the least capable and implanted them in such numbers that the cities they settled in were destabilised, anomie and crime supplemented deprivation. She refutes this. The migrants were the most resourceful in their communities as their very decision to leave demonstrated. As a collective they remade America, North and West and East and South in multiple positive ways.

The final chapters recount their final years. Isabel Wilkerson did an important service in capturing their memories before they passed away. This is an elegy to a forgotten generation.

There is an issue of course with memory. The interviewees were in their seventies and older, they were frail so reliability and accuracy must be factored in. But this is true of all oral history and in this instance counteracted by the sheer number of supported interviews she conducted and her use of a wide range of other sources.

A remarkable and moving story.

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Xavier Gil
Un llibre clau per comprendre el conflicte racial als EUA
Reviewed in Spain on November 30, 2017
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
És un llibre magnífic que permet conèixer amb rigor científic i, al mateix temps, amb un estil entre literari i periodístic que és un encert, aquest gran i desconegut fenòmen històric. T'ajuda a entendre i molt, la tensió racial als estats units que, desgraciadament, és contínuament notícia.
Per aquells que vulgueu practicar el vostre anglès, el nivell lingüístic és assequible per un anglès B2

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Amazon Customer
informativo
Reviewed in Brazil on January 27, 2023
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Bastante informação sobre a história da divisão de brancos e negros dos estados unidos. Uma obra de leitura obrigatória para entender a divisão e segregação do país

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Francois von Zedtwitz
Excellent book
Reviewed in Germany on May 17, 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Excellent, well researched book. Reads like a novel!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Historic masterpiece! Well done!

5.0 out of 5 stars Every American Should Read This Book

5.0 out of 5 stars A well documented account of the Black Exodus from the Jim Crow South

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5.0 out of 5 stars Ilustrador

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegy to a Forgotten Generation

5.0 out of 5 stars Un llibre clau per comprendre el conflicte racial als EUA

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book

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Historic masterpiece! Well done!

Every American Should Read This Book

A well documented account of the Black Exodus from the Jim Crow South

Ilustrador

Elegy to a Forgotten Generation

Un llibre clau per comprendre el conflicte racial als EUA

informativo

Excellent book