Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: An Epic Tale of America's Great Migration

Nancy: It's a great book to read about the "great migration" that is written by an African American author. The perspective of the persons telling their stories is different. The viewpoint is not clinical as an outsider of African American race. It's like I was invited in and given a comfortable chair to sit down to listen and relive their experiences. I loved it.

United States on Nov 02, 2023

lerone: This book provides an excellent account of a family's history, chronicling their struggles and triumphs, while also emphasizing the importance of staying true to one's roots and not letting success change who you are.

Canada on Oct 25, 2023

Drew Mayes: I honestly cannot pinpoint a dislike of the writing. Every word that I read, served as enlightenment for me. I walk away with a better understanding of how and why, we as a people, wound up in the locales we're in to this very day. I've heard the term, ( The Great Migration ) all my life. Now I have an understanding of what actually went on.

United States on Oct 16, 2023

Nick: Honestly, I purchased this book from my kindle because I thought it was a sci-fi book from the title. It was recommended to me by kindle after finishing my last book - and it was a hasty purchase. Regardless, 300 pages later (not in one sitting) I was grappled by the suspense of certain stories. I’ll warn any would be reader there are some tough moments – as one should expect a book covering black history in the US. The stories are remarkable, and the author did a spectacular job telling their stories. To the author, I kindly thank you for this beautiful piece of work and all the work that went into it.

United States on Sep 01, 2023

RedMancunia: An engaging and informative unveiling of a significant element of America’s cultural shaping. A long read but one that keeps you engaging as it ducks between stories. I was moved as the three stories neared their end. Wilkerson shines a light on the power of the migration across generations of African American families. She encourages to understand the past to shape the future.

Australia on Sep 15, 2022

Sasha Lauren, Author: 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,...

United States on Jan 03, 2022

Cliente Amazon: The author's ability as competent and engaged researcher of the Black exodus from the South over more than 5 decades aside, she has managed in her interviews with those who have lived it to create whole family narratives of this impelling historical event, of which i believe most white Americans like me are fairly unaware. At the end i felt as though i really knew and understood these individuals, and their stories began to mingle with my own family stories... The author is also a creative writer who was able to describe in detail the settings in the old South from which these people came, the sights, smells, and feelings that took the reader there - incredible! Highly recommended, parts of it should be required reading in secondary school to put everyone on the same page for a change...

Italy on Sep 19, 2021

Shane White: An excellent history of the Great Migration, as told through the experiences of three migrants who moved at different times and for different reasons: one who migrated from Mississippi to Chicago in 1937, one who migrated from Florida to New York in 1945, and one who migrated from Louisiana to Los Angeles in 1953.

The first 183 pages are a detailed account of the three main characters’ lives before they left the South, a section of the book that I felt was far too long. The author could have conveyed the same information in about a hundred and thirty fewer pages.

The following chapters are far more interesting and tell how these people made their way across the country — I love travel stories and this section of the book in particular is especially well written — and document their varied lives in their new homes, from their arrival as young people to their deaths as pensioners many decades later.

One key issue that is frequently touched on but never fully addressed is the impact that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of black migrants had on the receiving cities and on the places the migrants left.
For example, is Chicago a better city now that so...

United Kingdom on Aug 18, 2021

George Hayes: A well written book that chronicles three stories from the Great Migration covering 6 decades.

Wilkerson's own parents were part of that migration and her studying of it has been a lifetime pursuit. This book follows the story of three migrants. Each from a different part of the south and each with a different destination. Wilkerson's storytelling is fantastic as she builds the story of each interspersed with facts and history of Jim Crow and the national effects of the migration on Northern cities.

The migration of freed black men and women is pivotal to how the United States is today. Despite that, this history is largely ignored for what might seem to be racial and political reasons.

If you are looking to understand black history in the American' 20th century, you would hard pressed to find better.

Canada on Aug 09, 2021

Clem: “Let us not fool ourselves, we are far from the Promised Land, both north and south.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a book that I think should be mandatory that every white person residing in the United States between the ages of 9 and 90 read. I don’t mean that in a harsh way. When one looks at the many accusations of racism as we approach the second decade of the twentieth century, it’s too easy for most white Americans to think that there isn’t a problem with racism in our country anymore, and the problems that we had were taken care of many years ago. I would guess 99% of African Americans would strongly disagree. Most would probably argue that whereas there have been great strides in the last half-century, there are still many more problems, and we have a long long way to go before there is any sort of racial equality.

Whereas this book is definitely about the ‘past’, the feeling that one comes away with is that the past was so harsh and brutal for people of color, and the obstacles so insurmountable, that it’s simply impossible to think that things such as a Civil Rights Bill and Affirmative Action can remotely begin...

United States on Aug 10, 2019