622 pages
Published Nov. 6, 2010 by Random House.
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. She interviewed more than a thousand individuals, and gained access to new data and offical records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. - Back cover.
This book shares the hard stories of black Americans struggling for a better situation. and the ways that white America systematically denied them those opportunities.
A moving history that aims to show that the migration of African-Americans from the South to the North was similar to the immigration of other peoples to the US. It is written as the biographies of three African-Americans who left the Jim Crow South to live and work in California, Chicago, and New York. Their harrowing stories are both a reminder of the depth of the tragedy of African-Americans in the land of the free and a salute to some of their great accomplishments.
I found some of the statistics about Detroit to be especially interesting. I liked the analogy of German Jewish immigrants' relationship with newly arrived Eastern European Jews to that of Blacks in the North to newly arrived rural Blacks from the South.
Simply essential reading for all Americans. A crucial but little-discussed part of American history is laid out in painful and harrowing detail, as are the many misconceptions white America has about Black people and their struggles. The author's excellent scholarship makes this book an amazing history text, but her engaging writing makes it fascinating to read. I'm a little envious she got to know her three central characters, especially Ida Mae, all of whom lived lives that were exceptionally challenging and hard, but far more interesting than most.
Wilkerson rescues and presents a crucial piece of 20th century history in a way both thorough and engaging. The backbone of the book is a braid of three biographies she has selected from a wider range of interviews and sources, well footnoted throughout for anyone who wants to inspect the receipts or to step further. The book succeeds on the strength of those biographies alone, but goes much further, lifting up the lives of all who participated in the Great Migration, telling again the timeless story of perserverance in the face of hardship and injustice, made new through the particulars. This centers the essential human story from the Jim Crow years in a way that a focus on Jim Crow never could. This reviewer learned the white-centered counterparts to this story, one of "forced bussing" and "white flight" and government "meddling", and found this not just a welcome correction, but …
Wilkerson rescues and presents a crucial piece of 20th century history in a way both thorough and engaging. The backbone of the book is a braid of three biographies she has selected from a wider range of interviews and sources, well footnoted throughout for anyone who wants to inspect the receipts or to step further. The book succeeds on the strength of those biographies alone, but goes much further, lifting up the lives of all who participated in the Great Migration, telling again the timeless story of perserverance in the face of hardship and injustice, made new through the particulars. This centers the essential human story from the Jim Crow years in a way that a focus on Jim Crow never could. This reviewer learned the white-centered counterparts to this story, one of "forced bussing" and "white flight" and government "meddling", and found this not just a welcome correction, but as if something mean and twisted and inscrutably half-told finally made sense, as if the missing pieces, the things left unsaid and the lies told to cover the holes, had been filled in.
Brilliant lesson in the history of the USA. Highly recommended.
A mixed bag. Wilkerson had me completely hooked on p. 12, talking about her parents, their migration story and the wonder it instilled in her. Her storytelling brings the book to life, following the paths of three real people who we come to deeply care about. These arcs, effectively presented in three parallel timelines, are moving and humbling and inspiring.
Unfortunately, like so many books these days, it suffers from poor editing. It's far too long, with unnecessary repetition: we don't need to have a full recap of material she introduced thirty pages ago, she doesn't have to spell out "Ray's wife, Della Bea" three times in two pages. And as captivating as she is in her storytelling, I found the writing tedious and opaque in the (blessedly infrequent) didactic portions. She seems hung up on finding a greater meaning in the Migration, trying to defend it through a sociological …
A mixed bag. Wilkerson had me completely hooked on p. 12, talking about her parents, their migration story and the wonder it instilled in her. Her storytelling brings the book to life, following the paths of three real people who we come to deeply care about. These arcs, effectively presented in three parallel timelines, are moving and humbling and inspiring.
Unfortunately, like so many books these days, it suffers from poor editing. It's far too long, with unnecessary repetition: we don't need to have a full recap of material she introduced thirty pages ago, she doesn't have to spell out "Ray's wife, Della Bea" three times in two pages. And as captivating as she is in her storytelling, I found the writing tedious and opaque in the (blessedly infrequent) didactic portions. She seems hung up on finding a greater meaning in the Migration, trying to defend it through a sociological lens, but I never understood what she thinks needs defending: migration is as human as breathing. To me -- a migrant from a disadvantaged country -- the wonder isn't the migrants, it's those who remained. But that's a different book.
The migrants Wilkerson follows left hellish conditions worse than anything you or I have ever experienced, some with unrealistic dreams of finding utopias, others simply with a hope for better opportunities. All of them found the latter, with new problems and suffering, and it was a beautiful experience to read and learn how each of them made the best of those. Wilkerson shines when conveying the joys and disappointments and feelings of these three amazing lives. I think I'm going to carry these stories with me for a long time.
It won the Pulitzer Prize, and completely deserved it.
Easy to zone out from time to time, it's kind of dense, but then you get smacked with a detail or two that makes you stew all night.
Very good book, but I wish it had been condensed a bit.
This is one of those rare history books that reads like fiction. She does such a beautiful job of weaving historical data and the lives of the people she interviews. How often do you read a history book and feel like you have actually come to know the people the book was about? And because she is able to make you feel close to the people, she is also able to make the realities of irrationally limited choices and incomprehensible hostility so much more real.
I didn't really know anything about the great migration before this book. I was fascinated by how drastically the South changed over the course of a lifetime.
Excellent book about the Jim Crow south and the Great Migration from it that traces the stories of three people who left the south - one to work as a train porter, another to the cold streets of Chicago, and a third a flamboyant and successful physician who never forgot the humiliations of white supremacy in the deep south. Hard to put down, terrifically well researched.
Magnificent
A much bigger group than I'd expected - a round dozen of white, middle-aged+, liberal women. And Bruce. The only man in the room, the only one who was a product of the Great Migration, and even the only native Portlander. It was almost too big a group to hold a discussion.
On the plus side, the language of the book was beautiful, verging on poetic. While it didn't say much that most of us already knew, it did tie all the info together. The three separate narratives interspersed with historical data was seen as either a needless distraction or as a clever way to build narrative tension. On the minus side, some saw the book as overly long and in need of paring. And repetitious. As if she was afraid that you couldn't remember the facts that she'd told you in previous sections.
This is the story of the migration of African Americans from the rural south to the north and west. Between 1915 and 1970, about 6 million people moved, often risking violence by leaving, even into the 1970s. Wilkerson found 3 individuals to represent this journey, and weaves their stories in and out of the more general history.
You know when you're reading a suspenseful novel, and the author is switching between different story lines, and you flip ahead to see what happens next to one character? Well, this history had me doing that. Wilkerson gives you the history, but roots is so firmly in individuals, families, and places that it lives and breathes. I'm a lazy reader. I rarely read nonfiction, and mostly read novels that have a plot that pulls me along. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the tales woven through it are still in my mind 7 …
This is the story of the migration of African Americans from the rural south to the north and west. Between 1915 and 1970, about 6 million people moved, often risking violence by leaving, even into the 1970s. Wilkerson found 3 individuals to represent this journey, and weaves their stories in and out of the more general history.
You know when you're reading a suspenseful novel, and the author is switching between different story lines, and you flip ahead to see what happens next to one character? Well, this history had me doing that. Wilkerson gives you the history, but roots is so firmly in individuals, families, and places that it lives and breathes. I'm a lazy reader. I rarely read nonfiction, and mostly read novels that have a plot that pulls me along. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the tales woven through it are still in my mind 7 months later.
Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer prize as a journalist, and this book was picked as one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year — deservedly so.
