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The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 39 mins
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The Warmth of Other Suns
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Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is one of the great untold stories of American history: the migration of Black citizens who fled the south and went north in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, an exodus of almost six million people would change the face of America. With stunning historical detail, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson gives us this definitive, vividly dramatic account of how these journeys unfolded.
Based on interviews with more than 1,000 people and access to new data and official records, The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of America's Great Migration through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, becoming the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country journeys, as well as how they changed their new homes forever.
Critic Reviews
"A landmark piece of non-fiction." (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)
"You will never forget these people." (Gay Talese)
"A brilliant and stirring epic." (John Stauffer, Wall Street Journal)
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What listeners say about The Warmth of Other Suns
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Rebecca Wilson
- 27-04-2022
Stunning, I loved this book
Beautifully written with endless insights into an unjust but fascinating part of American history. A powerful and beautiful account of what it means and what it takes to immigrate from the home that you know . Such a significant book in understanding racism in America and the people that endured and still do. Simply wonderful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 08-06-2021
Thought provoking
An incredibly well written and thought-provoking book on immigration. So much in the book for anyone that has ever migrated to relate to.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Dawson Ruhl
- 26-03-2021
A beautiful telling of post reconstruction migration
Such a lovely set of interlocking stories each representing hope for a better future tinged with a certain melancholy knowing you can never go home again. Robin Miles’ narration is superb, subtly bringing the characters to life. I didn’t want it to end.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Stan
- 23-11-2021
Great fusion of characters and sociology
The idea of mass internal migration by Blacks within the USA was initially unfamiliar, and then rapidly obvious.
This is a wonderful book on the subject, closely following the lives of three separate Blacks who left the South in the 30s to 50s, and whilst detailing their experiences, contextualising them with well-summarised statistical data.
Despite being a sociological study, the three principal characters live and breathe and are very well created, based on many hours of interviews with them, and others who knew them or where they lived.
Contrary to what had been often assumed and argued, this migrant group were among the better-educated and more energetic of the Blacks in the South, often being better educated, more stable socially and more ambitious than those they joined in the North. The author argues powerfully for the significant economic and cultural contribution of this wave of migration over roughly 50 years from 1915.
Jim Crow - a term I’d often heard but not well understood - was the term for the legal and social structures of the Southern states that kept Blacks down-trodden, segregated and at risk of injury or even violent death, long after emancipation from slavery.
Imagine the shock of the Black surgeon and former army captain, Robert Foster when in 1953, he reached parts of the USA that were not of the South, only to encounter the more genteelly presented “James Crow,” while looking for a place to sleep en route to California as he left the South.
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- Loretta.
- 22-04-2022
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
How can one treat a race of people so inhuman this book broke my heart but I no our Aboriginal's where treated very badly as well . Thank you Isabel for writing it & Thank you Robin Miles for reading to me 💜💜💜💜
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