When you hear the word immigrant, who usually comes to mind? I think of my grandparents who left Europe in the 1970s in search of greater opportunities. I picture my best friend’s parents who fled Pakistan years ago. The Warmth of Other Suns provides an intensely personal account of a migration of different sorts, however — an epic migration that is often overlooked but that has profoundly shifted American society.
The unique aspect of Wilkerson’s novel is that it recounts stories of people who were not walking through the doors of Ellis Island, but rather “citizens” who had already lived in America for years. Over the span of 55 years, 6 million black Americans made a risky decision to flee the Jim Crow South. I had always known that discrimination in the South was blatant and often generated dangerous environments for blacks. I found it surprising, however, that while the North was nowhere near as prejudiced, sentiments against people of color were still quite tempestuous.
Although the excerpts provided at the beginning of each chapter — namely the last two by Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin — were not Wilkerson’s own, they added depth to her story. The addition of Ellison’s quote underscored the idea that many blacks left everything they ever knew for something that was far from peachy, but there was still “something worth hoping for.” Baldwin’s quote, “The wonder is not that so many are ruined, but that so many survive,” echoes hardships faced by blacks that could not be described more powerfully.
Delving deeper, Wilkerson bases the bulk of her novel around three characters: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster. Each person brought a vastly different story to the table, but they were representative of the struggles and successes faced by the greater migrant population.
After doing some additional research on Wilkerson and her novel, I found that she had interviewed more than a thousand people and accessed data and official records in order to write her novel. This factual basis, combined with the intensely personal accounts of Wilkerson’s characters, resulted in a rare combination of history and prose that I enjoyed reading. In retrospect, The Warmth of Other Suns packed more of a punch than I thought it would.
