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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Start date: May 1, 2016

Finish date: May 31, 2016

Discussion: Nonfiction Group Read

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What Members Thought

May 01, 2025 Pamela rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-2025, non-fiction

Brilliant examination of the mass migration of African Americans from the South to the northern states of the US between 1915 and 1970. As this movement encompassed many thousands of people, Wilkerson has decided to base her book on three different, but in many ways typical, individuals who made the move at different times. We follow these three in detail, learning what spurred them to make such a massive decision and how things turned out for them and their families. These accounts are reinforc ...more

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May 01, 2016 Sera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, own, non-fiction

So I had written this long review of this book and it failed to go through on GR. I hope that at some point that I have the energy to write it again.

3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 30, 2013 Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-history, nonfiction, z-reviewed, history, z-first-time-5-star, zy-calibre, 20th-century, zy-own, z-5-star, california

Very interesting story about the essentially silent migration of blacks out of the South. I knew bits and pieces, but putting it all together was very powerful. For the first time I really felt what it must have been like to be black. It really is all about race, at least that is their experience.

This book can be read by the popular public, and as a college, or even graduate student text. Although written as a popular book, it has massive amounts of original research (oral histories, etc.). It i ...more

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Aug 08, 2020 Alison Starnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, social-history

In this book, Isabel Wilkerson describes the mass migration over several decades of the 20th century from the Jim Crow south to the northern and western cities of the United States. The migration was of black people, individuals and families, determined to escape the inequality and harshness of their living and working conditions.

Three individuals are profiled in detail - Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. All had different reasons for leaving when they did and In this book, Isabel Wilkerson describes the mass migration over several decades of the 20th century from the Jim Crow south to the northern and western cities of the United States. The migration was of black people, individuals and families, determined to escape the inequality and harshness of their living and working conditions.

Three individuals are profiled in detail - Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. All had different reasons for leaving when they did and all hoped for a better standard of living for themselves and their children, present and future.

The statistics at times make mind-boggling reading, throwing up numbers in the millions that have, until this book, remained largely unknown. The Great Migration began during World War One and was still happening in the 1960s.

The migrants had to compete with immigrants from Eastern Europe and blacks who already lived in the North. Just moving by itself didn't guarantee a rose-coloured future and inequalities still reared their heads.

Ida Mae fared best because of her naturally warm disposition, devotion to her family, and refusal to be anything but herself. Moving to Chicago from Mississippi, she found work in a hospital. Her positive outlook enabled her to live into her nineties.

George Starling married in haste when young and repented at leisure. He was forced to flee north to New York by his outspoken nature; however, his work travelling up and down the eastern seaboard railway lines enabled him to retain contact with his family in Florida.

Robert Foster was ambitious to better himself, marrying into an affluent and well-connected Louisianan family. As a doctor working in Los Angeles, he eventually became personal physician to the singer Ray Charles. He was determined to be noticed, and lived and dressed flamboyantly.

I was fascinated by the detail of these stories, the humanity of all three of these people, and their determination to forge a better future.

For anyone wishing to learn more about American social history and, in particular, the way in which black people took charge of their own futures, this is a compelling read.

I was sent an advance review copy of this book by Penguin Press UK, in return for an honest appraisal. ...more

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Jul 06, 2021 Susan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction-biography, world-lit-na-usa, literary-awards, literature-american, audible, southern, nonfiction-history, cultural-african-american, 2021

Impressive amounts of research in The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Oral histories with a few individuals who had, or their parents had, lived as slaves and then in the post-war South. The Great Migration from the viewpoint of a person of color versus an immigrant, a sharecropper, a farmer. Surprisingly, I would read this again. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, the book I had intended to read, was set aside after so many fellow readers recommended that ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-nonfiction, read-in-2012, civil-rights-slavery-racism

I spent over 5 months reading this a little at a time. Not because it wasn't good though...I found it to be very interesting and very easy to read. The book alternates back and forth between three black people's stories of their moves from Jim Crow south to New York, Chicago and LA, with some other relavant background history thrown in as well. ...more

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