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“Home was wherever she planted herself…”

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

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Cbr13bingo Home The Warmth of Other Suns, a National Book Award Winner, is a riveting study of the “Great Migration,” i.e., the movement of millions of Black Americans from the South to urban centers in the North and West during the period from 1915 to 1970. Isabel Wilkerson interviewed some 1200 participants in this migration in addition to scouring news sources, government studies, literature and more to provide this detailed and profoundly moving portrait of the generations of Black Americans who transformed not only their […]

I can see why she won the Pulitzer for this, but it wasn’t completely to my tastes.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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I’m really glad I did the audio version for this one, because I’m not sure my raccoon brain (shiny things only!) would have had the patience to sit through it otherwise, and it’s worth sitting through. Robin Miles is, as always, a great narrator. This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, either. I had actually never learned about the Great Migration in all my many (many) years of school, which is not really surprising, but is disheartening, so I was excited to get into […]

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (audiobook)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by @Isabelwilkerson dives into its case that the US has a racial caste system with compelling empirical and anecdotal evidence. I audio-booked this and found it to be a good delivery for this book. Recommend.

Two out of three in Caste bingo (is not a game I want to win)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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I imagine at the end of the day this book is more like 3.5 stars that I am rounding up. I’d say it’s three star for what it is trying to do, but four stars if I take it at what (I thought) was face value. Which is to say, I just finished this book and feel 50/50 convinced by Wilkerson’s thesis that America suffers from a caste issue, as opposed to (or, above a) race issue. I am Indian-American, so taking a step back […]

“They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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My boyfriend read The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson and suggested that I read it. I trust his judgment, but it didn’t hurt that it was named the best book of the year by a ton of publications. It also just sounded interesting. The Warmth of Other Suns is a non-fiction book about The Great Migration that occurred from 1915-1970. Coming into this novel, I was vaguely aware that a large number of Black Americans had moved up North after slavery ended, but that was […]

“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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This was really interesting to read back to back with How to Be an Antiracist; they shed light on each other in weird ways. But they are also two very different books! My main takeaway from Caste is that Isabel Wilkerson is a great writer. I’m set to read her first book next month, and I’m now looking forward to it even more. She employs metaphor and other literary techniques in a way that you don’t normally see from non-fiction writers. It brings a depth […]



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