Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Caste

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

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Scanning through the reviews of this book on Goodreads and taking only the negative or critical reviews, I found the following two ideas predominated those: Wilkerson’s book is a solid overview of the concept and history of the American caste system, but not as incisive or in-depth as it could be AND the concept of race still being an issue is deeply offensive or laughably absurd. You can imagine which one of these two paths I am more likely to take. I do have some […]

What Nazi Germany, the United States, and India all have in common….

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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Caste was the second book I read by Isabel Wilkerson and I was super happy I did. The book itself weaves in history and current-day challenges seamlessly to understand how we as a country have been an influence abroad, and what we need to deal with internally as a nation if we want to move forward. Wilkerson compares and contrasts the major caste systems of history and today, including the United States, India, and Nazi Germany. Before I read this book, if I heard the […]

Caste – A book that may change how you view society

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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There are books one reads for pleasure or diversion. There are books one will read for school or for work. Then, there are some books one reads because they are important and can provide new insights into the world. Caste falls into the latter category. I read this because a close friend asked me to do so, she was putting together a group to discuss the book and asked me to join (and I honestly felt flattered by the request, considering the intellects of the […]

“You know that there are no black people in Africa.”

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

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I was happy when my book club chose to read Caste (2020) by Isabel Wilkerson. I’d already read The Warmth of Other Suns by Wilkerson and had Caste on my reading list. Although the underlying theme is still race in America, I found Caste to be very different from Warmth of Other Suns. Caste explains how slavery created a caste system in America that still survives today. Wilkerson does this by exploring the eight pillars of caste and comparing the caste systems in America, India, and Nazi Germany. Although I found Warmth a little more interesting because Wilkerson […]

“Home was wherever she planted herself…”

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

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Cbr13bingo Home The Warmth of Other Suns, a National Book Award Winner, is a riveting study of the “Great Migration,” i.e., the movement of millions of Black Americans from the South to urban centers in the North and West during the period from 1915 to 1970. Isabel Wilkerson interviewed some 1200 participants in this migration in addition to scouring news sources, government studies, literature and more to provide this detailed and profoundly moving portrait of the generations of Black Americans who transformed not only their […]

I can see why she won the Pulitzer for this, but it wasn’t completely to my tastes.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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I’m really glad I did the audio version for this one, because I’m not sure my raccoon brain (shiny things only!) would have had the patience to sit through it otherwise, and it’s worth sitting through. Robin Miles is, as always, a great narrator. This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, either. I had actually never learned about the Great Migration in all my many (many) years of school, which is not really surprising, but is disheartening, so I was excited to get into […]



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