Why did I love this book?
I'd heard about this book for years and finally picked it up at a bookstore when I did a signing. It is amazing! This is the story of The Great Migration, how Blacks in the South slowly made their way north between roughly 1915 and 1970.
"Stories" is more accurate since each person made their own decision and their own way—though the author wisely focused, for the most part, on three very different people, why and how and what they found when they moved.
And "escaped" is more accurate since plantation owners often went to fatal lengths to prevent the loss of their cheap labor. I didn't want to stop reading.
19 authors picked The Warmth of Other Suns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official…