Key themes
- The Great Migration as one of the great population movements of the 20th century
- The personal is the political — three individuals as history
- What racism costs — economically, psychologically, generationally
About this book
The Great Migration of Black Americans told through three unforgettable lives; monumental narrative history.
Published in 2010, The Warmth of Other Suns won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Wilkerson interviewed 1,200 people and spent fifteen years on the project.
Discussion questions
- Wilkerson follows three individuals across decades to tell the story of millions. How does this narrative choice — the particular lives standing for the large movement — serve history writing?
- The migrants moved north hoping for something better and found something different. How does Wilkerson show what they found — without making the North a simple paradise or the South a simple hell?
- The book took fifteen years to research and write. How does this long labour show in the text — and what does it mean for a Black author to reconstruct this specific history?
- The Great Migration is one of the least-taught major events in American history. What does its relative absence from school curricula say — and what does Wilkerson's book do to address this?
- The Warmth of Other Suns has been compared to The Grapes of Wrath as a record of an American migration. What do the two books share — and where do they diverge?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
Often taught together
These books are frequently paired with The Warmth of Other Suns in book clubs and classrooms.
This is a set text
The Warmth of Other Suns appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
Reading it with your group?
Get The Warmth of Other Suns
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.