Isabel Wilkerson’s indelible books The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent have, both of them, won awards and have been properly lauded; they don’t need to be touted by me but tout them I shall. They are meticulously researched, precisely written, and pack a devastating emotional punch.  

I have a long commute to work (shout out to my 795 and 695 buds), and I need to fill that time with something. I’m obdurately old school and prefer CDs and radio to podcasts. When NPR is too much (Esther Ciammachilli is never too much) and the Orioles aren’t playing, I check out nonfiction audiobooks from the library. I listened to The Warmth of Other Suns a few years ago and Caste this year; I learned so much from both. The sheer number of primary documents cited is overwhelming. The personal narratives are enlightening and heartbreaking.  

Side note: I’d listen to Robin Miles read a Comcast contract. She narrates both books and she’s a national treasure. I feel like she should win an Oscar or a Grammy – or something. 

The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of the Great Migration, the movement of millions of African Americans from the South to more Northerly states, through the lives of three people who made the journey. It is intense. I’ve been known to cry in the car, and there were tears.  

Caste is an incredibly persuasive comparison of the caste systems in Nazi Germany, India, and the United States. Wilkerson’s central conceit is that the caste system in America is, in many ways, the most oppressive or violent system. She writes, “Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe, African-Americans in the antebellum and Jim Crow South, and Dalits in India were all at the mercy of people who had been fed a diet of contempt and hate for them” (151). The results of a diet of hate and contempt are unfortunately predictable. Wilkerson explores the grotesque, hateful, and banal violence of the caste system in depth. She writes, “African-Americans were mutilated and hanged from poplars and sycamores and burned at the courthouse square, a lynching ever three or four days in the first four decades of the twentieth century” (155). I won’t focus on the physical violence in this review, but it is all here, and it is terrible.  

Wilkerson includes illuminating episodes from her own life along with historical comparisons. While traveling for the book and for work (at the New York Times), Wilkerson is mistreated by academics, flight attendants, businessmen, and small-business owners, as well as being unjustly accosted by the DEA, all because of her position in America’s caste system. Based on her personal experience, she writes, “this was the thievery of caste, stealing the time and psychic resources of the marginalized, draining energy in an already uphill competition” (223). Outside of the obvious physical violence wrought by the caste system, Wilkerson highlights the daily mental and emotional violence, and that seems really important. 

I’ll end this review with a few more words from Wilkerson on the more subtle ways the caste system continues to do harm. She bluntly writes, “The friction of caste is killing people” and “Societal inequity is killing people” (304). This is not someone who writes for dramatic effect without evidence to support her claims. To back up her claims, she cites a study by a Harvard scientist, “’High levels of everyday discrimination contribute to narrowing the arteries over time,’ said the Harvard social scientist David R. Williams. ‘High levels of discrimination lead to higher levels of inflammation, a marker of heart disease” (306). This struck me. This internal manifestation of external discrimination is horrendous.

The American caste system is real and it is, overtly and insidiously, violent. The study goes on to find that, “People who face discrimination…often build up a layer of unhealthy fat, known as visceral fat, surrounding vital organs, as opposed to subcutaneous fat, just under the skin. It is this visceral fat that raises the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease and leads to premature death” (307). There are dozens of powerful and insightful passages I could have highlighted, but I wanted to highlight the above passages because they so powerfully illustrate how the American caste system continues to destroy black and brown bodies from without and within.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson is available in print, large print, e-book, e-audiobook and audiobook on CD.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson is available in print, e-book, audiobook on CD, and as a Playaway.

Ben works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).