marcellainthemargins's Reviews (496)

Nope. Wat een gewauwel.

Let me start by saying this book is phenomenal, it has been quit some time since I read a debut novel this strong. 

It is the story of life on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. The book switches perspective in each chapter, from both the enslaved people and the plantation owners, aswell as some chapters told from past tribes in Africa and greek chorus style chapters from the ancestors. All these voices however, pivot around two men in love, Samuel and Isaiah. The book is about their relationship and how they find love and comfort in eachother whilest tensions on the plantation reach a crescendo. 
This isn't an easy book. One, for its subject matter. It comes with the content warnings you might expect from a book dealing with slavery. But it also isn't a straightforward story. It switches around from different perspectives, it jumps back and forth in time, and the writing, whilest beautiful and lyrical, also uses a lot of similes and metaphors. It's a book that takes a bit more effort and concentration to read in my opinion, but I promise it pays off. 
It is a weighted book, weighted with history and wisdom and trauma and sadness of generations of enslaved people. And at the same time it has notes of lightness and love and hope in the story of Samuel and Isaiah. Painful and soothing at the same time. 
There is so many layers to unpack in this story, I feel like I've only scratched the surface in my first read, so I have an inkling I will be returning to this book in the future.

I'll start by saying this book is the best book I have read for a long time and I hope I can do it justice.

In The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson tackles the immense topic of the America's great migration. Between 1915 and 1970 roughly 6 billion black Americans migrated from the South to the north and west in search of a better life. 
She frames the story around three individuals,  who each were part of the exodus at different parts of the country, at different times and for different reasons. And places their stories in the bigger historical context. 
This book is so huge in scope, and the amount of research that you know that went into this book so astonishing, yet it feels so intimate. 
I loved getting to know Ida Mae, George and Robert, three very different people, but all of them with their own tales to tell. Getting to know them so well makes you realise even more that all these other billions of people who migrated were also individuals, with each their own stories. 
And along side being complety invested in their lifes, I also learned so much about this part of the American history and could connect it to the current issues around racism the country deals with now. 

It is a difficult topic to read about, and obviously content warnings are in place. There is especially some lynchings being described that were hard to read. But despite it being a heavy topic, I never found it a struggle to read. Wilkerson's writing has a flow to it that make it such an engaging read. 

It isn't often I read a book that I want to push into everyone's hand to read, but this one is. At once profound and delightful.