21st Century Books Special Edition: Isabel Wilkerson on 'The Warmth of Other Suns'

[Music] I'm Gilbert Cruz editor of the New York Times book review and this is the book review podcast special edition this summer in addition to our regular episodes we have a series of interviews with authors whose books made our list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and this is our final one in the series and it's a wonderful one to end on this week I'm joined by is Isabel Wilkerson author of the 2010 book the warmth of other Sons The Epic story of America's Great Migration it is the best non-fiction book of this Century as chosen by just over 500 respondents to our poll from earlier this summer Isabelle is the former Chicago bureau chief for the New York Times she's a winner of a pullit Sur prise in feature writing and she's the author of the 2020 book cast the origins of our discontent Isabelle welcome to the book review podcast oh thank you for having me your book took its title from Richard Wright the author of blackboy when did you know that was the title very evocative were there other titles that were in the running that is a great question because this book was a nameless orphan child for most of the time I was working on it I did not have a title it actually uh peeved me and worried me over the course of the time I was working on this book this book took me 15 years so I often say if it was a human being it would be in high school in dating that's how long it to write this book and so for the longest time and most of those 15 years did not have a title and sometimes I would periodically stop and try to read Blues lyrics and I read poetry from the the the time the mid 20th century the time of the Great Migration and then I was reading the rereading the the black boy and I was reading the annotated version of black boy and I was reading the uh the the end notes in the back that were describing the process through which he wrote this book and so what happened with him was that he wrote the full book Black Boy originally wanted it to be called American hunger um but the book of the month club decided that they did not like the second half of the book and so they said we will only choose this book for the book of M club which meant a lot to him of course if you remove the second half which was about his experiences in the north and so he had to quickly figure out how was he going to close this book when half of it was missing and the conclusion that he had had in mind was no longer available so he ended up having to write at the very last minute rushed to come up with some ending and in that ending was some of the most beautiful language that I think he ever came up with and among the things that he wrote in that new ending was I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown I was taking a part of the South to transplant an alien soil to see if it could grow differently if it could drink of new in cool rains Bend IN strange winds respond to the warmth of other Suns and perhaps to bloom when I saw those words which had been deleted from from every other book because now the book that we have black boy is now what he intended to be the full first second half that is what was in that the end notes which had been lost to time and I found it and I recovered it I knew instantly that was the epigraph and it was from the epigraph that the title came as the subtitle to your book States this is a history of the Great Migration which was this massive and very intentional movement of black Americans from the south to parts of the north parts of the West over the course of many many decades what was our general understanding of the great Mig before you published this book and and how do you think your book has led to a new and Fuller understanding of it well I think that one of the reasons that I wanted to write it is because most of the of the research and the writing about the Great Migration had been from the standpoint of the larger uh the the larger perspective of the economy what was the affecting the economy what was effect on um poverty there was looking at it from a policy perspective for the most part as opposed to what was it like to be these people in the moment in a in a circumstance that was untenable in a world in which every single thing that you could and could not do was based upon what you look like where you fit in the hierarchy of the of the Jim Crow South time when it was actually against the law of a black person and a white person to merely play checkers together so they were living in a world that was hard for us to imagine today such suffocating uh world that they were living in and so I wanted to be able to understand what was like to be those people in the midst of a circumstance that was untenable and having to make this decision of their lives to leave all that they' known for a place that they' never seen in search of in hopes that life might be better so much of it was was an academic perspective larger view perspective on the system that they entered and the effect that it that it had on the cities from that perspective and I wanted to understand what was like to be those people and I wanted readers to know what it was like to be those and you also give sort of a a very robust view of how how long this happened in America as you say it took place essentially correct me if I if I get the date slightly wrong from the about the 1910s to the last ones were in the late 60s or the early 70s essentially from World War I until the 1970s in other words after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s began to take hold in the South that's when the migration ended and and the migration took place from the south where again as you're right most black Americans the great great great majority of black Americans lived before World War I and then by the time the Great Migration was over half of black Americans lived outside of the South it took place along three tracks parts of the South to DC Philadelphia New York Boston parts of the South to Detroit Chicago Milwaukee parts of the South to Los Angeles and other parts of California and in order to tell those three tracks you found three people whose lives that you present to the reader not only a as a way of getting into the the core of the thinking and the feeling of what it would take for a person to leave their home and and Venture into the unknown but also to trace these these three Pathways it must have taken you forever to find those three people what was that process like well the process was to essentially have a casting call for the a role of being a protagonist in my book I I went to all the places that I could think of in the North and the west where people who might have migrated would now be most of these people were pensioners by this time so I went to churches in the in the North like churches in Brooklyn where everyone was from a particular part of North Carolina I went to uh it's there were multiple Mississippi clubs clubs in Chicago there was a Greenwood Mississippi Club a green wood Mississippi Club a Newton Mississippi Club a Brook Haven Mississippi Club a Grenada Mississippi club and if you were from Grenada you didn't go to the BR Haven Club so I was going to all different clubs and and that's where I was hearing and getting a chance to hear and to see and to meet people who were part who would have been part of the Great Migration and then also out in California I went to there was a juneth parade that I went to there were multiple Louisiana and Texas clubs out in in uh Los Angeles which were all tracking with the the uh the roots that the people took in order to uh escape the gym CL South so I went through all those places in effort to hear as many uh voices to be able to compile as many stories but primarily to be able to identify who might ultimately be the protagonist in the book I needed one person for each route of the Great Migration as you mentioned the East Coast route the Midwest route and out to the West I needed to have people who have been Le leaving for different reasons in other words different precipitating causes for their particular migrations and I needed people who were in different situations so one was a sharecropper's wife another one was a railroad man and there was a surgeon who left Louisiana for for California and I also needed people who had very strong personalities so that they would stand down on the page because this is this is narrative non-fiction and you're starting from scratch to tell two stories that will hopefully read as would a novel and so you need all of the details and all of the all of the material I often call it when I'm putting together something like this it's like creating a quilt and I need to pull all to together the scraps and remnants of fabric that will ultimately become this larger quilt and so that's the beginning process the most important decision you make is who will you be writing about and remembering that when you start out with somebody like this when you're doing non-fiction you don't have the full story you hear a little bit you're enough to be able to give you some insight into what their personalities are like what their General story might might be like and then what kind of Storyteller are they are these people who have tremendous detail have documentation of what they did you're looking for all of those things I narrowed it down to about 30 people any one of those 30 could have been the three but I I I ended up with these three because they were strong personalities there was a chemistry with them when you're doing this kind of work I knew that this was going to be something that was going to I was going to spend a lot of time with them my meeting with them initially was just the very beginning and so I was going to need people to be there through the duration and people who would enjoy the process and I've enjoy the process then but that translates into chemistry if I felt the connection to them then I felt that the reader would ultimately feel a connection because it would come through in the work that I was doing and then and then also I was needing people who had a sense of humor because some of this material on our country's history is very difficult and the experiences that they had were some of them were so painful that they'd not told their own children some of what they had gone through a lot of them were experiencing a kind of post-traumatic stress from what they had endured in the gym cross South and so I needed to have people also had some type of sense of humor that would help carry the story through for anyone reading it what did they think this was going to be because none of them if I'm correct um unfortunately lived long enough to see the publication of the book but what do you think there reason in the end from their end for participating was that was another consideration and in the selection of people because these are people who the kind of work that I do you're not trying to pin someone the H the wall to get talk this these are people who had to be feel free comfortable and at peace with where they were in the world and what they'd experienc and these are people who had had a sense of history and they were working through what they lives had been they were at the at the end toward the end of their lives and they these were people who were particularly introspective in a way that's very helpful for someone who's doing this kind of work they were people who had somehow made peace of what they had experienced and they were looking to be helpful to someone who they felt a connection to who they felt the trust in I mean I had earned their trust I had spent time with them and I think that it was a sympatico experience I was looking to tell the story of this Grand EX of which they were a part and then they were at the tail end of their lives seeking to share that seeking to come to terms with what they'd experience so it was a wonderful pairing when it came to that and did you have to tailor your interview style to each them was there something about the fact that they were on the older side there's a way that respectful way that you speak to older people maybe that if you're interviewing people of of another generation you would you would speak to them differently well I do think that when you're doing this kind of intensive ethnographic work participant observation you're in their world I approach this work with a tremendous sense of gratitude for their willingness to spend time on something like this as you mentioned sadly none of them live to see the the book come out one of them George Starling said to me if you don't finish this book soon I'm going to be poop reading from heaven and he was right it just took the time that it took and to do it and I would just say that they were an interesting thing is that I was I was had this idea that I could bring them together in one space because it would be a lovely thing for them all to meet I was spending time with each one of them you were asking me that I change my Approach with each one I I adjusted myself to what they were saying and what they were interested in doing I might have arrived with something in mind that I wanted to cover with them but multiple multiple multiple of course time S I sat down with them I don't review it as interviewing I view it as spending time with them and hearing what was on their hearts and minds and so they might take me in a totally different direction I could not always know what I was going to be getting or what they felt like talking about if they wanted to talk about high school that was where we were doing if they wanted to talk about courtship that's what we were talking about and so I went with them on that um I I just generally absorb what they're saying and make myself try I try to make myself the best possible listener and audience for them as they as they're speaking I it's a conversation it's not my asking question it's not a Q&A it's a conversation and I just want to make it as as comfortable for them to be able to share whatever is on their heart at that time so that was my Approach but my goal of of having them all together in one place when I started this work there was this thinking that I I was a friend a writer friend was telling me that well you need to have them in telling the narrative they all need to come together at some point and I hoped to have them come together but they had no interest whatsoever in meeting each other I I I just could not believe when I would talk with them about I'm there are two other people that I'm talking to for this book and one of them did this one of them did that they had zero interest whatsoever in fact they didn't even want to hear about the others it's almost as if they felt I was cheating on them or something so so that didn't go anywhere it ended up that they never met they had no interest in meeting they only meet in the pages of this book we'll be right back [Music] welcome back this is the book review podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz I'm joined this week by Isabelle Wilkerson author of the warmth of other Sons The Epic story of America's Great Migration uh Isabelle let's take a a step or two back you were uh working for the times when you won the Pulitzer Prize for as a citation notes your profile of a fourth grader from Chicago southside and for two stories reporting on the midwestern flood of 1993 sometime thereafter you really started working on this book in Earnest and I imagine just it just took over in the end it took you 15 years to right what started you on that Journey did you have any idea it would take up so much of your of your life that it would be the thing that started to Define that period of your life perhaps I had no idea and I would never have set out to do anything would take 15 years ever it's a good thing I didn't know because I don't think I would have even started it I I canot imagine committing to something you knew would take 15 years so now I had no idea I did not plan for it to take that long there were all kinds of things that occurred in the process of working on this I once I identified these three first of all it took took about eight 18 months a year and a half or so to be able to find them you going from City to city in order to find them and then after that once I found them that was just the very beginning and then once I got started once I began spending time with them and rotating among the three this another that took so much time I then began to run into what's an occupational hazard in this kind of work is that some of them began to get sick ill and and some of them began to pass away so I was spending sometimes I would a land of really excited to be able to talk to Dr Foster was always so excited to meet with him and instead of being able to see him in his home I'd have to go to the hospital and sit by his bedside and there would be absolutely there was no research going on at that time uh it was just a visit to spend time with him that's part of the process and so that's one of the reasons why it took so long to be able to complete this your question though was about what was the paita event or how did I come up with this idea why did I decide to commit to what would ultimately take me 15 years and what it was is I grew up as the daughter of people who are part of this Great Migration I was surrounded by people growing up in Washington DC whose parents and grandparents had all come up from North Carolina South Carolina Virginia Georgia Florida I was surrounded by that I was surrounded by The Language by the accents by the food by the music I was surrounded by that and every everyone I was around we just took people just took it for granted well we're we're going to people were making a drive back to North Carolina over the summer there were various things that were touch points in this migration but no one was talking about it no one was calling in a great migration no one was acknowledging the the the beautiful similarities like everybody the parallelism among everybody's experience no one was talking about this seemed as if it was just something that just popped up out of nowhere but in fact something like that does not happen without some kind of planning without some type of recognition of something larger in the process of participating in it and so I decided over time I was I I I got further reminders working as a as the Chicago bureau chief in the midwest I was exposed to people who were coming from a different part of the South to Chicago Detroit and Michigan a different migration stream than than I was exposed to Growing Up in Washington DC and if I was out in Los Los Angeles as a national correspondent I was running into people who were from Texas and Louisiana so that those patterns became evident in everything that I was doing if I were writing about people who were African-American in these cities and after the Peter I was asked if you were write to write a book what would it be and there was no question in my mind there was only one thing I wanted to write about and that was a great migration so that's how I got it the book has a a very interesting structure it's a history book there's personal history there's National History you're cutting in between time frames as well cuz each of these three main characters in the book are experiencing The Great Migration it aftermaths in a different decade and so you're cutting between that between history H how did you how did you decide that that was the way that you wanted to structure that you wanted to cut between those people with these and then knowing when to step back and have a chapter or a section that just tells you about the history or tells you about something that is not focusing on one of those three characters it's a lot of puzzle pieces but I imagine at the beginning you had to say this is how I think it's going to look I actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the structure should be thank you so much for asking me about the structure because that is the basis for being able to tell the story it was going to it was always going to be three different story lines and then you could add a fourth meaning The Great Migration itself so they're like four characters in this braid of narrative and the question was how to make all of those pieces fit one of the things that I decided early on is that I did not want to have one large chunk like all of ID and then all of George and then all of Robert are ping and I didn't want that because I wanted because I felt it would be more repetition be reading the same thing over and over again starting from spratz and with one and going all the way from beginning to end with one and then starting all over again with the other person and I didn't want to do that I wanted it to be one seamless story line with all of the parallel narratives all working in tandem and interwoven so that you were you were with them in childhood you were with them as they were recing and that's a language that they would have used you all of them were together in the process of of of learning the world that they were in and making the decision as to whether they should stay or whether they should go it's very important to me that the reader be experiencing all of this at the same time with each of them and the problem was that they were doing different things as you noted at different times they were born during different years they were in different parts of the country they were leaving for other parts of the country that were distinct and different so there was a lot going on and I think that structure is the one thing that that kind of holds it together it's the adhesive for any um braid narrative such as this I looked around to see if there was any other book that I could turn to any other template that had done what I was seeking to do and I could find no other book uh that did this I uh I spent a lot of time with uh WGC vault's book the immigrants I love that book and I consider doing that he he carries forth each narrative on its own and I just felt it for what I wanted to do I wanted the reader to be with the same with with in the same emotional space as the protagonist were at the same time irrespective of geography and chronology I wanted them to be in the same space so that is what propelled the the decision to have them all in one place I also felt that by rotating them in the way that I do it starts with ite and then it's Geor and this Robert it a George and Robert item a George and Robert and I felt that the reader could begin to follow them in the same way I was I was so caught up in the imagery of of of all of this with the journey and the trains and the train tracks and the train wheels and I just thought that if you followed it along if you could get in the rhythm of these three people that you could follow it and you could be with each one of them in that moment in their lives and so what's most important is not the date that you looking at or the location where they happen to be but what is the emotional space where they are in their own as soon as I started this book and I have to think that other people felt the same way I was in because the first line is gorgeous the night clouds were closing in on the saltlicks east of the Oxo Lakes along the folds in the earth beyond the yucha river incredible evocative how long did you work on that opening line for I would have SP probably the cumulative amount of time was maybe two weeks maybe three weeks a lot of time meaning cumulative time and I can't tell you the exact time because I was worried about it I was thinking about it I was pondering it I was meditating on it for the longest time so much of that chapter was written before I actually had the opening I did a lot of I did I would read a lot of geological books believe it or not I really wanted to I spent a lot of time reading about the land about the ways you describe the land the geological scientific descriptions of the land I found it that language to be so evocative and poetic in its own way I spent I actually bought a used geological dictionary That's How Deeply I got into it the same goes for a title I I wasn't sold on the title I was always thinking and thinking thinking and I I started to do a lot of uh AST astronomy I was reading lot of astronomy I got into into it so deeply that I was reading about Hubble like I read the biographies of Hubble this is the detail that's why it took me 15 years every single sentence is deep with research in every way multiple books might go into every single sentence that's incredible and somewhat overwhelming to be honest yeah we'll be right back [Music] welcome back this is the book review podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz I'm here with Isabelle Wilkerson author of the warmth of other Sons Isabelle you right over and over again it keeps coming up about this publication the Chicago Defender uh I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what was a Defender what it meant to people at the time and and how you were able ble to access uh its archives in in the ways that I assume that you were the Chicago Defender was the repository of the news and the hopes and the dreams of the people because it was giving them uh a window into what the place one of the places that they wanted to get to was actually like it gave them a sense of what were they entering to the degree that was possible and it and it was also kind of like the Facebook of the migration you might say because this was a way of being able to learn about what were the jobs that were available what were the rents slide in the place that they wanted to go it it was something that allowed them to picture what it might be like of course there was no internet to be able to look these things up it's incredible the limited amount of information upon which they had to depend in order to make these decisions that they these life and death decisions that they had to make the the Chicago Defender also was considered contraband in the South it was very hard for them to get a copy parts of the South was very very difficult it was banned um material that could be very dangerous to be be able to get a copy of uh it was the Pullman Porters who would uh essentially deliver the Chicago Defender and also the Pittsburgh Perry and some other Northern papers at predetermined locations they would drop it off uh from the train as it as a train was making its way through some of these towns in the South and then people would know where to pick it up so it was it was like the Beacon of Hope for for them and because they were in very isolated locations and would have no other way of really understanding what the north was like before they made the journey you talk about how the Chicago Defender was sort of like the Facebook of its day we're talking about a million years pre- internet however you were also doing your research in in the earliest years of of the book certainly before the height of the internet I I have to imagine that as I mentioned finding archives finding letters finding the equivalent of the Chicago defender in other cities that were along the Great Migration Trails what was the how was doing research then I'm talking like this was a million years ago the different for what it's like to Google now you know it was it was before Google Google came out I think in in the mid 90s and this was pre Google and even when Google started it did not have all of the access and all the materials that we now take for granted so essentially it was microfilm and microfish that was old school going into those darken spaces in a library and having to get that it would always be these strips that would that would snap when you're trying to roll it through I mean old school hard to believe now having to send away I remember having to send away for materials for used books from old books that that didn't that that had no access to otherwise I remember being so excited to get an actual copy of one of the most famous papers ever written about Migration by a man named ravenstein out of out of London in the late 19th century it was such a joy to be able to get these things it was they were so precious to me because it took so much energy to to get that your hands on anything and that's another reason why it took 15 years this was old school before we could just type in a question about what was Chickasaw County like what was the population in Chickasaw County Mississippi we can just look that up now that was not possible in those days so that's another reason it took so long it had to be done the way that it was because for narrative non-fiction which is a genre in which you're seeking to to you're take you're doing all the research that's necessary for any non-fiction work and then you're translating all of that material all those facts all of that data into something that is a narrative that anyone could potentially read as they would a novel you wanted to be page turning you want it to be based on character protagonist suspense there's a lot of suspense in the book all of that can only be done if you have the information material the facts the history upon which to build it and that's where why something like this most of the time is spent just getting the material that you need in order to create the quilt that you ultimately want to write before writing this book you were reporting repor not not I could say this from having worked in journalism for a while not every reporter is a great writer that's totally fine it happens you want to pullitzer for feature writing we we know you are a good writer but this there's a leap between writing a series writing articles and then writing a book of this length you you maybe had a sense that you could do the research do the reporting but when it came to the writing when it came to that really trying to find the language to make it propulsive to never make it feel like a a a history textbook what were your concerns your fears around that it was it was my first book hard to believe it's my first book I had Grand Ambitions for what it could be I could picture what it could be the issue was how am I going to harness all that I had faith in how could I harness all that into a cohesive whole and once I had the structure I then then I could move forward I did not have an outline I'm it's interesting people some people have outlines I wrote it with the sense of it had to be organic so it wasn't I I wanted to have an outline but that just was not going to work so I found that I was writing it and I would get a sense of when should I stop this and then start with someone else it was really intuitive when it came to that I wish that there was a way that I could say this is how I made the decision to stop at this point I loved the idea of being able to build the suspense it was really I think what carried me through was just the the challenge of being able to do it I knew it could be done and I just had to focus on what was it going to take to get this done for whatever reason I I had no doubt that it could be done I just had to figure out what was it going to take again that's going back to the material it it goes back to the people it goes back to even once the once the people passed away that was even more more inspiration for me to be able to get this done it just meant that I now had a responsibility to make the trust that they had in me worth something I had to make it I had to make it I had to convert this into something that would be worthy of the trust that they had so that was what was fueling me through and I would say that writing is is always one word followed by another word followed by another word to make a sentence that will create a paragraph that will create a scene it is really not that different it really is and that was what I what carried me through is that I've been doing M mainly narrative for the times and the the last years that I was uh there and it was a felt like a very natural transition into something just extending it into a larger Arena but it's basically the same challenge that any writer has one word followed by another word followed by another word as evocative as poetic as lyrical as vibrant as you possibly can make it and then write that next sentence and there you go it's been a few years since this book came out I'm wondering particularly since you've been able to publish another book since how you look back on it now how you look back on its publication how was received and then in the years since how how how people talk to you about it what what you think it it put into the world it's been 14 years and uh I have actually been on the road with this book almost the entire time time with the exception of Co and then we were doing zooms so it has had a really long lifespan that I I could never have anticipated the goal was to finish it and and that had no idea how it would move B in the world one of the things that it's become is it's become a kind of validation for the people who were part of this Great Migration who often did not speak about it to their own children and it's given them the kind of a a platform through which to share uh their experiences and that's been such a fulfilling experience to have but also because the people have gotten up in age many of the people have passed away were part of this Great Migration I will often hear from the children and grandchildren and sometimes they will say to me with with joy in their in their hearts but also tearfully they will say to me with gratitude that this book was the last book that their mother or their father their grandparent happen to have read before they left this planet and when they say that it's it's deeply meaningful to to me because it's saying that at the end of these people's lives they had had a chance to have this kind of conclusion this kind of circular acceptance of the role that they had had and and a sense that they were part of something bigger than themselves and I take that as one of the unexpected honors of this work Isabelle I have asked all the other authors who've participated in this series to talk about the book that they read the most over the course of their lives I'd love to hear yours let me just start by saying that with non-fiction we often don't get the luxury of being will read books over many many times over for I speak it for myself is that I read so many books for the work itself much of it being non-fiction meaning history books or other B sociology books whatever may be so I often don't get the chance to read books over and over although I would love to I also don't get a chance to read novels as much as I might like because I'm so focused on the work but the book that I would point out as the one that I've read most deeply is a book that has some challenges because it has some problematic aspects to it but it is The Grapes of Wrath and I mention The Grapes of Wrath because this was the book that showed me that writing the warmth of the Suns was possible and that's because it is gorgeously written it is is it's got some problematic aspects to it it's got it has problematic depictions of African-Americans problematic depictions of women and the ending is very controversial and always was from the time it was released and I am not really a fan of the ending but it's beautifully beautifully written as we all know of course it's a classic but the what the meaning for me is that I had to study it in order to find a way to tell the story of The Great Migration in a way that would allow me to have the narrative flow through without uh disruption and still be able to tell the larger story of Great Migration and one of the things that he does with this book is that he has inter chapters and those inter chapters are gorgeously gorgeously written and my view that they're the most beautiful part of the book and in those he he tells the larger story of what's going on at the time where the bankers are closing in or where they're looking out at the land and they're seeing it turned to dust and those are the the beautifully poetic and evocative inter chapters that that allowed me to be able to see that that could be possible but I could tell the story My narrative was going to be very comp very uh complex with three different stories he's telling one I'm telling three and I needed to be able to know how can I tell the largest story I call them setback chapters call them into chapters those are woven in the book in between the narratives without disrupting The Narrative and that's the beauty of this book for me uh another thing is that he Steinbeck had been a journalist before he started to work on The Grapes of Wrath he uh wrote in the mid1 1930s uh for a newspaper about the migrant camps and experiences that they had and then he decided he wanted to do something larger and that's how he began his work on the The Grapes of brass so I felt the connection there also it turned out that he had a lot of trouble coming up with the title he spent a lot of time worried about the title as I as had I and in his case his wife came up with the title and it was from the song Battle himm of the Republic I ended up getting it from my title came out of the the words of Richard Wright so I felt the connection with this book problematic though it is I feel that it was it showed me that there was a template um that didn't exist elsewhere as to how I could write the war of other Sons I think that's a great choice problematic as it is Isabelle Wilkerson not problematic is the warmth of other Sons which remains just an amazing accomplishment it was it is all these years later thank you so much for joining us at the book review podcast to to talk about it and to reflect upon it thank you so much for having me that was my conversation with Isabelle Wilkerson author of the book the warmth of other Sons The Epic story of America's Great Migration the best non-fiction book of this century is chosen by the participants of our recent poll I'm Gilbert Cruz editor of the New York Times book review thank you for listening