The Warmth of Other Suns

In the tradition of works by Taylor Branch and J. Anthony Lukas, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: The Epic Story Of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson, the first African-American Woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, chronicles a watershed event in American history–the decades-long migration of African-Americans from the South to the North and West, from World War I through the 1970s—through the stories of three individuals and their families.

Over a decade in the writing and research, and drawing on archival materials and over 1,200 interviews, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS traces the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster, from their difficult beginnings in the South, to their critical decisions to leave behind all they know and look for a better life in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Because the Great Migration was so vast and unfolded over many decades, it has received very little attention on a national scale and it is perhaps one of the greatest underreported stories of the twentieth century. These migrants were silent actors in racial and social change in this country. They weren’t the ones leading the marches or perhaps even marching at all. They were the ones who were quietly forced to leave an arbitrary and arcane culture in the South. They were survivors of a brutal era who didn’t benefit from the Civil Rights Movement or even their own personal sacrifices. Yet, some of these migrants, as well as their children and grandchildren, would go on to become among the most influential people in the country: Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Michelle Obama, August Wilson, Denzel Washington, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Thelonious Monk, Arthur Ashe, Michael Jackson, Prince, Tupac Shakur, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X, to name but a few.

This extraordinary book is a universal story of longing, loss and hope — people leaving one isolated land for the dream of a better life in more fertile soil. As with The Greatest Generation, theirs are stories of adventure and courage and, with the generations of people of the Great Migration passing away, this was perhaps the last chance to capture their lives before it was too late. THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS will stand as a classic of narrative journalism and of modern American history, on a par with works by Diane McWhorter, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Robert Caro.