The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

This nonfiction books is an account of the Great Migration, during which millions of black Americans fled the

South between the onset of World War I and the mid-1960s. As a student of American history, I'd been aware of this migration, but the sheer scope of the movement was astonishing. In addition, Wilkerson presents up-to-date research that debunks many of the misconceptions of those who made the migration, including that they brought disfunction to northern cities, so often promulgated by whites, often to disasterous results. In fact, most of the migrants were better educated, more likely to stay married, and more likely to be working than their counterparts born in the north. Perhaps most astonishing in the book was the reminder of just how racist the north was. After a march in Chicago to protest housing segregation, MLK mentioned that while he'd seen hate in the south, he'd never seen anything so vitriolic as what he experienced in the north.

What was great about this book was how Wilkerson told it. She intertwined the stories of three migrants -- Ida Mae, George Sterling, and Robert Pershing Foster -- who made their journeys from and to different places at different times. These characters revealed their stories in great detail, and Wilkerson told them in such a way that you were sucked in. You wanted to keep reading because you needed to know what would happen to these people. What a great way to tell history.