Good evening everyone, I’m really glad you’re here.
Welcome to the Crasstalk Book Club discussion of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, The Warmth of Other Suns.
In the great tradition of Crasstalk Book Club selections this was not exactly an uplifting book. It’s oppression and degradation with the occasional “They made it!” moment. So, pretty much your typical immigrant story.
But these people weren’t immigrants. They were Americans, many with ties to this country older than the white people who shit on them for sport. The people of the Great Migration put up with the worst the United States had to offer and still kept hoping and striving for better. The thought that kept running through my head on the second reading was something right out of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney’s favorite book, Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
Ok, Jesus, sure. But WHEN exactly will that be?
The heroines and heroes (I’m talking about all of the two million people who participated in the roughly 55 year mass exodus) of this book endured all manner of persecution and indignities in both the “old” and “new” world. Between actually making it out of the south, the manner of travel and the hostile reception in their new homes there were times in this book where I found myself saying out loud “Ida Mae, you might as well have just stayed put. Mississippi may be horrible, but so is Chicago and Chicago also has a crappy winter.” Yes, I talk to books.
Did the Great Migration accomplish anything? All of that suffering and toil and in 2011 the United States still has a black incarceration rate 5.6 times that of white people and a high school black high school drop out rate that is twice that of whites. According to the U.S. Census bureau, ten of the most segregated cities today were cities that were major stopping points during the migration. Did the “promised lands” live up to the hype? Or did the North and West just find a more insidious way to deal with the mass influx of southern blacks?
Then there is the Civil Rights Movement which was almost entirely an undertaking of southern blacks. Did the millions who left create the pressure necessary for southern civil rights activists to demand equal rights? Or did those who left take the “easy” way out?
But these are all questions about the big picture. I’m sure you all picked up on a lot of things you want to discuss, but here are some questions to get the discussion started.
Questions:
- What do you think about the form of narrative fiction? A problem I had was that when the plot of one of the three main characters or in one of the vignettes interspersed through out the main narratives, was particularly dark, I found myself able to distance myself from the action because of Wilkerson’s lovely, poetic narrative style, that, when combined with epic levels of horror, made the stories seem like fiction. Did the narrative style make it easier for you to access the material or did you find that it actually created more distance and inhibited your ability to engage?
- Wilkerson argues that the two million black people who moved from the South to the North and West should be viewed more as “refugees” than migrants. Wilkerson means this term to reflect the war-like hatred and overt malice of the location they were fleeing from, but do you think that buying into this analysis also has an “othering” effect on the migrants who were in fact Americans, many with older roots in the United States than the their white southern and northern tormentors? Think about the rhetoric surrounding the evacuation of the predominantly black displaced residents of New Orleans after Katrina . What does the term refugee mean to you? Would you appreciate the term being applied to you?
- Wilkerson sets up a not-so-subtle discussion of class, education and faith in the juxtaposition of the three main narratives. Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, the earliest of the immigrants grew up on a farm in the backwoods of Mississippi. She attended enough school to learn to read and do basic math but the rest of her education came from living in the world. She never moved beyond the lower middle class and yet it seems she ends up the most content of the three at the end of her journey. Was this because of her faith? A lack of intellectual and professional ambition? Then there was George Starling, my pick for the most interesting and tragic of the three characters. He tried to move heaven and earth to finish college but was ultimately unsuccessful. The brief taste he had of higher education and the possibility of an intellectual career left him tormented for most of his life. Then there is Robert Joesph Pershing Foster, the most educated and the most successful of the three who, despite all of his successes, remained the most deeply enraged about his treatment in the South until the end of his life. Even Starling who faced far more catastrophic frustrations because of Jim Crow, but who became devoutly religious later in life, was able to find a sense of peace. Do you think that Wilkerson is trying to make a statement about education and class? Do you think she is saying that oppression might actually be hardest on those who have been taught to expect more of themselves? Who have their plans dashed through no fault of their own?
- What do you think of the hostility leveled at the newly arrived in the North? Was this typical xenophobia? Or was there an element of something else, something that the Irish, Italians did not have to face?
- Why do you think a story of this magnitude, has managed to fly relatively under the academic radar, outside of African-American studies circles? Was this the first time you had ever learned about the Great Migration? Considering the magnitude of the impact the migration had on both the North and the South why is it it’s gone fairly overlooked? What do you think of Wilkerson’s answers to this question?
- Did the in-depth look at what it was like to be a black person, living under Jim Crow surprise you? Is there a comparison to be bad between Jim Crow racism and contemporary racism?
- What about the people who stayed behind? What do you think Wilkerson is trying to say about the people who because of a sense of duty, fear or belonging remained in the South? What do you think you would have done? Why?
There are about a billion other questions and points of discussion to have here. I’m looking forward to this discussion.
