The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
'A landmark piece of non-fiction' - Janet Maslin, The New York Times
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is one of the great untold stories of American history: the migration of black citizens who fled the south and went north in search of a better life From 1915 to 1970, an exodus of almost six million people would change the face of America. With stunning historical detail, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson gives us this definitive, vividly dramatic account of how these journeys unfolded.
Based on interviews with more than a thousand people, and access to new data and official records, The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of America's Great Migration 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.Â
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country journeys, as well as how they changed their new homes forever.
'You will never forget these people' - Gay Talese * 'A brilliant and stirring epic' - John Stauffer, Wall Street Journal * 'The mass migration of African Americans out of the US south forever changed the country's cultural fabric - and Wilkerson's history of this period is full of sacrifice and hope . . . a long overdue account' - Lettecha Johnson, Guardian * 'A deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book . . . Wilkerson has taken on one of the most important demographic upheavals of the past century and told it through the lives of three people . . . lyrical and tragic' - Jill Lepore, New Yorker
