(NONFICTION – History)
The Warmth of Other Suns – The Epic Story of American’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2011; Vintage; Reprint edition, 2011).
Reviewed by Chuck Dayton
This book relates the story of the migration of millions of African Americans from the south to the northern “receiving centers” (author’s term for large northern cities) in the 20th century following WW I until 1970. As they were able, people fled the Jim Crow (segregated) south in pursuit of safer places to live. Crimes against African Americans in the south often went unpunished. Whites often killed them for no reason, and without fear of punishment. Their hopes were for not only safety, but opportunity to succeed financially.
Wilkerson focuses on the lives of three migrants as a tool for telling this story –Ida Mae Gladney who moved from rural Mississippi to Chicago, George Starling traveling from Florida to New York, and Robert Foster who migrated from Louisiana to Los Angeles where he practiced medicine for many years. The stories of their leaving are harrowing and the stories of their resettled lives unsettling. These three people are very different, yet face some of the same trials and tribulations in the places they chose to settle. The Chicago location was interesting to me. It put in focus how ghetto formation first began and how some of the problems encountered today by the city of Chicago are a direct result of policies restricting where African Americans could live when they first moved to the city.
I was interested in what it meant for “colored people” (author’s term for African Americans mid twentieth century) to cross the line from north to south while riding the train. The book describes colored people having to move to the Jim Crow cars, separate from whites, often involving standing outside in the rain and waiting. White folks never had to leave the train. No commentary in my collection of passenger train books describe what a Jim Crow car was, or speak to segregation on the rails at all.
This is a very readable book, and the author does a good job presenting the information she received from the three people in her extensive interviews with them. There is a thorough explanation of her methodology at the end of the book. I recommend this book because it is so well written, and to me, an eye opener of the trials of African Americans even during my lifetime.
© 2012
This is the most interesting and informative book I read last year. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteLast summer (August 2011) I attended a lecture by attorney and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson about her research and discoveries about the 60-year-long migration of African Americans from the “Jim Crow” South to the North and West of the United States. Her talk was based on her 15 years of research and thousands of interviews that resulted in her book, The Warmth of Other Suns, published in 2010—the first major, critical examination of the migration of six million people and its continuing impact on the culture, politics, economy, and demographics of the United States.
ReplyDeleteI would concur whole-heartedly with Chuck‘s assessment. It is a wonderful book. It will deepen your reflection on the lives of any African Americans in your orbit (i.e., family, friends, acquaintances), illuminate the different patterns of cultural transfer to expect among blacks raised in the Midwest versus those raised on the East Coast versus those raised in California, and will place their story squarely in the context of other significant waves of migration (e.g., the Irish, the Persians, the Scandinavians, the Chinese, the Eastern Europeans) that have shaped and continue to shape the richly diverse population now residing on the North American continent. (Note: It is a work of sociology and deals with some violent and painful chapters of American history and contains some off-color language in parts.) There are very few African Americans that were not influenced in some way by this massive migration. Many are the descendants of migrants (as am I), while others trace their lineage to those who remained behind in the South.
For a brief audio introduction to this book and its author, you can listen to award-winning radio interviewer Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon’s December 2010 interview of Isabel Wilkerson (http://khotanharmon.com/ ) or the Sept 2010 NPR interview (http://www.npr.org/books/authors/137938611/isabel-wilkerson )
I like your Webber Family Bookshelf. It is a great idea. (Wendy encouraged me to share a comment.)
I just finished reading The Warmth of Other Suns and found it a very interesting read. Learning how the blacks saw themselves as they went through the migration was interesting. I gives a lot of insight in to what they went through and how their lives were changed. Thanks Chuck for posting this review.
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