Catching Up

 I have finally gotten around to  reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  The book was published in 2010  I don't know what preoccupation preempted my attention back then to produce such an oversight.  What finally woke me up was stumbling on an interview of Wilkerson on the New Mexico PBS program,  Report from Santa Fe, first aired in 2013.

Lorene Mills interviews Isabel Wilkerson

 Wilkerson, before producing the book, had a long and much acclaimed. career in journalism which included a Pulitzer -- the first given to an African-American woman.  She conducted a thousand interviews in the fifteen years of researching and writing The Warmth of Other Sons.  In it she recounts the decades-long story of the migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow Southern states to the North and West of the U.S.

 I found Wilkerson's speaking ability in the PBS program to be totally captivating.  I don't recall listening to anyone before who was so articulate.  Her eloquence in speaking about her experience in producing the book made me immediately resolve to find a copy.  A quick search turned up a copy on AbeBooks for just $7.50, shipping included.

The story of the great migration, covering decades is a complicated one which the author makes into an enjoyable read partly by focusing on the lives of three individuals who found very different paths out of the South.  

For me, the book has got me to remembering my own developing awareness of Black History.  In fact, I recall when I was in school being skeptical about the idea that there was a need for such a categorization of History, even though I had seen a lot of evidence supporting such a need during the course of the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s.

Travel and life experiences eventually showed me the way to a more critical view of how History is constructed and told (and often distorted), but even these many years later Wilkerson's book is filling in a lot of important facts and ideas for me about this country's record of dealing with civil rights and human rights.