The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson structures the narrative around three real individuals: Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper who left Mississippi for Chicago in the 1930s; George Swanson Starling, who left Florida for New York in the 1940s; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a physician who left Louisiana for Los Angeles in the 1950s. Their stories span different decades and destinations of the Great Migration.

The book covers the Great Migration, which lasted roughly from 1915 to 1970, during which approximately six million African Americans left the rural South for northern and western cities. Wilkerson organizes the narrative into two main waves, each with distinct destinations and historical circumstances.

It is a work of narrative nonfiction based on over a thousand interviews conducted by Wilkerson during more than a decade of research. Wilkerson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work as a New York Times journalist, employs novelistic storytelling techniques while maintaining documented factual accuracy.

The book won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was widely named one of the best books of the year by publications including The New York Times. It has since been adopted by numerous universities as a common reading selection.