Judy Levin Book Discussion: The Warmth of Other Suns

from npr.org

Please join Judy Levin for a discussion of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns on March 22 at 12:30 pm in the Children’s Library Activity Room.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a history of the Great Migration, the movement of black Americans from the South to the North beginning during World War I and ending in the 1970s, told through three personal stories. This historic account covers the half-century, nation-altering migration that is rarely taught in schools. The massive redistribution of population was instrumental for the civil rights movement as well as the restructuring of modern cities and urban life. The stories of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster are powerful narratives chosen to highlight the three routes of migration.

Over the six decades of the Great Migration, six million people relocated from the oppression of the South to the opportunities of the North. Many members of this migration didn’t even realize they were a part of a much larger exodus, as the choice to flee the South was personal for each individual and family. Can this wide-scale event be covered through the deeply personal stories of three individuals?

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with Isabel Wilkerson alongside an excerpt from the book.

See a map about the migration, complete with relevant letters sent to newspapers or to loved ones back home.

"Wilkerson has created a brilliant and innovative paradox: the intimate epic. At its smallest scale, this towering work rests on a trio of unforgettable biographies, lives as humble as they were heroic… In different decades and for different reasons they headed north and west, along with millions of fellow travelers. . . In powerful, lyrical prose that combines the historian’s rigor with the novelist’s empathy, Wilkerson’s book changes our understanding of the Great Migration and indeed of the modern United States."

-Lynton History Prize judges statement

from npr.org

Isabel Wilkerson, writer and bureau chief at The New York Times, was inspired to research and write this book by the story of her own parents’ migration. She spent fifteen years interviewing over 1,200 people, researching archival material, and traveling the same routes that brought 6 million black Americans from the South to the urban North. She was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her work as the Chicago bureau chief with The New York Times and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Wilkerson’s website is a treasure trove of information, background, discussion questions, and videos about the book and the Great Migration.

Read articles written by Wilkerson in TheNew York Times.
Follow her on Twitter.
Find the book in our catalog.