As someone who primarily reads fiction, I was a little intimidated by the 622 page “The Warmth of Other Suns.” However, Isabel Wilkerson quickly drew my interest into the real lives of the real people she chronicled in her ambitious non-fiction narration of the Great Migration.
Wilkerson tells the story of Ida Mae Gladney and her husband George, living in a share-cropper cottage in 1930’s rural Mississippi. Ida Mae is married and pregnant by 16, and George lacks options for upward mobility. Share croppers worked daily on the plantations sun up to sun down. Just a step up from slaves, their pay is a place to live, and a portion of the crops and livestock they tend to. They hang onto the hope of receiving some sort of cash from the owner at the end of the year; sometimes they get a small pittance, but most of the time they get nothing. The plantation owners protect their system; violence and threats of violence, and a lack of property ownership keep the share croppers living and working on the plantation.
George and Ida Mae, in anticipation of retaliation from their plantation owner, secretly plan their escape, and sneak out during the night to head north, riding in the “Jim Crow” car of the train. Once the train crosses the Mason-Dixon Line, theoretically, they can sit where they want. George and Ida Mae soon learn that they have escaped legalized segregation but not discrimination. The reader learns how George and Ida Mae gain employment and raise their family in spite of constant difficulties. I grew to care very much about Ida Mae and appreciated her living testimony to grace and determination.
Wilkerson introduced us to several other Blacks, such as George Swanson Starling and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster and their families, who leave the south for the cities of the industrial north and California. These gentleman escape the abuse of their southern white contemporaries and leave for good with their personal and compelling dreams, trials, and talents. Foster becomes a doctor, eventually achieving status and wealth in California, but he carries emotional scars with him until the his final days.
“The Warmth of Other Suns” reads at times like a fictional family saga, and at times like sociological study of human behavior, complete with statistics on crime and out of wedlock births.
The book provided rich context for my two fictional selections for Black History Month.
Reading Progress
January 27, 2025 – Started Reading
January 27, 2025 – Shelved
BubbiesBooknBlog 
I very much liked your summary. I think the best quote was th
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