CultureWatch: A Debut Author - The Warmth of Other Suns; DVD Tip: The Forsyte Saga

In This Issue:

The stories of these individual three lives involved in “The Great Migration” are brilliantly told in The Warmth of Other Suns and serve to soften and humanize the long, carefully researched story Isabel Wilkerson has to tell. The DVD Tip, The Forsyte Saga reminds us just how compelling and sexy the Victorian and 1920 eras can be. Can a new production of Trollope's The Pallisers be far behind?

Books

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS
by Isabel Wilkerson
Published by Vintage Books/A division of Random House; © 2010; Paperback: 538 pp

This book is an ambitious undertaking, and as a bulky volume, its 538 pages may look a bit intimidating for those who are used to slimmer, more easily-handled paperbacks. I offered to loan my copy to a young black woman I know, but she took one look at its bulk and said: “No thanks; it’s too long.” It took a good bit of persuasion to convince her to give it a try, but three days later, she called to say: “Thank you. You were right. I have scarcely put it down. I’ve hardly even checked Facebook since I opened the cover.”

I suspect that the bit about Facebook bit was hyperbole, but I know what she was trying to say. The Warmth of Other Suns is the kind of book that grabs you right at the start, and involves you so completely that you don’t want to put it down. It is, however, a good idea to do so, giving time for absorption and reflection before the next diving-in. Occasionally while I was reading it, I found myself on overload, and in need of a couple of days’ breather before dipping back in — but I was always eager to do so after a short break. “Information overload” may sound off-putting, but in this case, it was a matter of information processing, and what followed was always well worth my return to the story.

The book is a study of a movement that Wilkerson calls “The Great Migration,” which occurred during the period from, roughly, 1915 to 1970. The migrants to whom she refers were American blacks who fled from the South, seeking relief from segregation and the Jim Crow laws. During those years, approximately 6 million people moved north and west, seeking better lives for themselves and their children.

According to Wilkerson’s meticulous research, following the Civil War, Negroes were granted civil rights, and could vote, own land, and attend schools. It took until 1880 for the first Jim Crow laws to be passed, essentially wiping out all the gains that had been made for the freed slaves. Ms. Wilkerson’s description of those laws is hard for the modern sensibility to credit, but having briefly experienced southern Mississippi in 1958, this reviewer can attest to the author’s veracity. I remember being dumbfounded by the “Whites Only” signs and distressed by the sight of Negroes walking along country roads with their feet wrapped in rags.

Painting: During World War I there was a great migration north by southern Negroes by Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland

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