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ntruslow's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.5
tspoon3330's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.5
A much needed addition to ones understanding of Black history. The great migration is often misunderstood and as Wilkerson points out, people ask the wrong questions in regards to the movement. Instead of asking what harm the migrants may have brought with them, Wilkerson believes we should "question how they summoned the courage to leave or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long."
I wish I had learned about the Great Migration in school, but I feel that as an adult, I have a greater appreciation for the harrowing decisions so many if our ancestors made. Who knows what our lives might be like had they chosen not to leave the south? Reading this book gave me a better look at the what ifs.
I wish I had learned about the Great Migration in school, but I feel that as an adult, I have a greater appreciation for the harrowing decisions so many if our ancestors made. Who knows what our lives might be like had they chosen not to leave the south? Reading this book gave me a better look at the what ifs.
booksthatmatter89's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.5
The Warmth of Other Suns is a non-fiction story about the Great Migration, the greatest untold story of the 20th Century. Lasting from 1915 to 1970, it is the movement of 6 million blacks from America’s south to America’s west and north to escape the Jim Crow caste system. At the start of this movement, it was made up of individual families making the decision to resettle due to low wages, harsh treatment, and lack of job mobility, and to improve their lives and futures. The migration required great courage and had unforeseen consequences.
The book is an account of the true stories of three brave but typical migrants. Three black southerners who made the decision of their lives and followed three main streams of the migration: Ida Mae Brandon Gladney was a sharecropper’s wife who left Mississippi for Chicago; George Swanson Starling was a college student and citrus picker from Florida who headed to New York; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster was a surgeon who served in the United States Army and then drove across the desert from Louisiana to California.
Having been a fan of Isabel Wilkerson’s other novel Caste, I was excited to see how she was able to tell this story. Wow! She was able to take so many hours of interviews to weave this incredible journey as if you were immersed along for the ride.
You don’t always hear these stories growing up in school, but this is the history that we can’t forget or let disappear. I highly suggest everyone take the time to pick up this story and let it alter your views of the south, salvers and origins of our
wordsofclover's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
This is a fantastic and engaging book about America's Great Migration in the 1900s as Black Americans left the Jim Crow South for new lives and better opportunities in the North. We follow three people's real stories - Ida Mae, George and Robert from three different Southern locations as they move themselves and their families and how their lives turn out in the North but they never lose their connection to the South.
I listened to this on audiobook and while it was a long listen, I throughly enjoyed it. As a non-American reader, I enjoyed learning more about this time in American history and this isn't something I had known about before though obviously we learn about the American Civil War and the US Civil Rights Movement in Irish education, this is a topic that is connected to these but its own story entirely. I found it interesting to see how the North wasn't automatically better for the migrants - while they escaped the suffocating Jim Crow of the South, they still faced and dealt with a lot of racial discrimination and divide in different ways in the North - and Northern cities such as Chicago and New York were forever changed after his migration as well in socio-economic and city division ways as well which was fascinating. It was also amazing to hear of some of the famous people who would never have been able to reach the heights they did if their parents or family members hadn't chosen to migrant to the North where they had the opportunities the did.
The care and detail put into the research for this book must have been immense and really commend the author for doing a stellar job - from the sounds of it, this book took a long time to research and write as she sat and talked to Ida Mae, George and Robert in the later years of their lives to understand their story and experiences better.
Highly recommend this!
I listened to this on audiobook and while it was a long listen, I throughly enjoyed it. As a non-American reader, I enjoyed learning more about this time in American history and this isn't something I had known about before though obviously we learn about the American Civil War and the US Civil Rights Movement in Irish education, this is a topic that is connected to these but its own story entirely. I found it interesting to see how the North wasn't automatically better for the migrants - while they escaped the suffocating Jim Crow of the South, they still faced and dealt with a lot of racial discrimination and divide in different ways in the North - and Northern cities such as Chicago and New York were forever changed after his migration as well in socio-economic and city division ways as well which was fascinating. It was also amazing to hear of some of the famous people who would never have been able to reach the heights they did if their parents or family members hadn't chosen to migrant to the North where they had the opportunities the did.
The care and detail put into the research for this book must have been immense and really commend the author for doing a stellar job - from the sounds of it, this book took a long time to research and write as she sat and talked to Ida Mae, George and Robert in the later years of their lives to understand their story and experiences better.
Highly recommend this!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Drug abuse and Miscarriage
helen_is's review against another edition
I thought this was interesting but it repeated itself so many times, & the three stories mixed with the social commentary interrupted themselves so often, I lost track of all the threads. Needed a really good edit.