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The Warmth of Other Suns
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The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) (edit title/settings)

The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

by Isabel Wilkerson (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to... read more

Summary edit see section history

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, 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 destined to become a classic.

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First Sentence edit see section history

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.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Part I: In the Land of the Forefathers
1. Leaving
2. The Great Migration, 1915-1970

Part II: Beginnings
1. Ida Mae Brandon Gladney
2. The Stirrings of Discontent
3. George Swanson Starling
4. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
5. A Burdensome Labor
6. The Awakening
7. Breaking Away

Part III: Exodus
1. The Appointed Time of Their Coming
2. Crossing Over

Part IV: The Kinder Mistress
1. Chicago
2. New York
3. Los Angeles
4. The Things They Left Behind
5. Transplanted in Alien Soil
6. Divisions
7. To Bend in Strange Winds
8. The Other Side of Jordan
9. Complications
10. The River Keeps Running
11. The Prodigals
12. Disillusionment
13. Revolutions
14. The Fullness of the Migration

Part V: Aftermath
1. In the Places They Left
2. Losses
3. More North and West Than South
4. Redemption
5. And, Perhaps, to Bloom
6. The Winter of Their Lives
7. The Emancipation of Ida Mae

Epilogue

Note on Methodology

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • African-Americans' "Great Migration": Beginning in the early 1900s, and lasting the better part of the century, due to the restrictions of Jim Crow among many other reasons, African-Americans began leaving the American South, en masse, for new lives in the North and the West of the country.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in New York Times Bestsellers (Current). (authoritative list)
This book is in New York Times 10 Best Books of 2010. (authoritative list)
This book is in Janet Maslin's Top 10 Books of 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Isabel Wilkerson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780679604075
Page Count: 640

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: E185.6 .W685
  • Dewey: 304.80973

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • All God's Children
  • The Promised Land
  • Passing Strange
  • Fly Away: The Great African American Cultural Migrations
  • At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Modern Library Paperbacks)
  • Sundown Towns
  • The Eyes of Willie McGee
  • 12 Million Black Voices

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Anyplace But Here
  • Black Boy
  • The Clansman
  • Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
  • Following the Color Line
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • Invisible Man
  • Long Distance Life
  • The Last Train North
  • Movin' On Up
  • Native Son
  • Notes of a Native Son
  • The Piano Lesson
  • Tragedy of Lynching (Black Rediscovery)
  • 12 Million Black Voices

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