Excerpts, Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns (2010)
To tell the story of the Great Migration (1920–1970) of African-Americans from the Jim Crow South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western U.S. cities, journalist Isabel Wilkerson did research for about 15 years and interviewed over 1,200 people. In this prize-winning book, Wilkerson moves from a panoramic view of the Great Migration to the oral histories of three individuals who participated in this mass movement that impacted the U.S. in major ways.
Creative nonfiction, the genre of our class, uses methods drawn from qualitative social science (e.g., ethnography, interviewing) and literature. Her method might be called portraiture, in which she applies her skills as a creative writer and historical researcher to present history through the stories of individual lives.
- What is the effect of Wilkerson beginning her book with these three stories? How does Wilkerson reveal the oppressive nature of the Jim Crow South through the narrative details of these stories? Why do you think she selected these people to illustrate the process of the Great Migration? Select a few sentences that seem especially powerful.
- In the second excerpt, Wilkerson begins to paint the larger picture. What does she assume of her readership? How does she use metaphor to capture the realities of the segregated South? Select a few sentences that seem particularly powerful.
