Book Review: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Warmth of Other Suns

By Isabel Wilkerson 

First, I just want to put it out in the world that one of my long term goals is to get this book in the hands of teenagers. I have the intention of working with school districts to have high students read this book instead of Huck Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird. 

I loved this book so much!
I really enjoyed how the author, Isabel Wilkerson mixed historical facts with true, stories of actual people. 

This book is the story of the Great Migration time era which spans many, many years. I don't think people realize the extent of the Great Migration. Because most of our schools teach a white washed education, many people I have spoken to have not learned about the Great Migration even though more people moved during the great migration than the Gold Rush and Dust Bowl migrations combined. 

This book tells the story of 3 different families who migrated from the south to the north during the Great Migration time era. Their stories are each unique with heart ache and joy. frustrations and celebrations. I fell in love with each of the people and really wanted them to succeed and have joy. 

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book: 

"Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding by both races--is the first step toward its solution."

"The revolution had come too late for him. He was in his midforties when the Civil Rights Act was signed and close to fifty when its effects were truly felt.

He did not begrudge the younger generation their opportunities. He only wished that more of them, his own children, in particular, recognized their good fortune, the price that had been paid for it, and made the most of it. He was proud to have lived to see the change take place.

He wasn't judging anyone and accepted the fact that history had come too late for him to make much use of all the things that were now opening up. But he couldn't understand why some of the young people couldn't see it. Maybe you had to live through the worst of times to recognize the best of times when they came to you. Maybe that was just the way it was with people."

"Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling each left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes. The three of them would find some measure of happiness, not because their children had been perfect, their own lives without heartache, or because the North had been particularly welcoming. In fact, not a single one of those things had turned out to be true. There had been sickness, disappointment, premature and unexpected losses, and, among their children, more divorces than enduring marriages, but at least the children had tried. The three who had come out of the South were left widowed but solvent, and each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them."