“The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” (Random House, 2010) is a story that was waiting to be told. Janet Maslin of the New York Times notes that the book “does a superb job of capturing the way whole lives can be changed by small outrages, and the way those changes are neither irrevocable nor simple.” Isabel Wilkerson’s “closeness with, and profound affection for, her subjects reflect her deep immersion in their stories and allow the reader to share that connection,” Maslin writes. Los Angeles Times writer Lynelle George sums it up with this statement: “For many this book will flesh out an under-reported chapter of American history, which was Wilkerson’s goal. However, for a certain generation of African Americans, this book will stir a sense of relief — that these stories and rituals that so many migrants attempted to hand-carry in the hopes that they might take root — have now been set down between two covers and in such dignified fashion.”
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