I will never forget taking my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, out into the world and hearing the most startling endorsement it has ever received. On a community radio show in NYC, we were soberly discussing the impact of the Great Migration and the fortitude of the ancestors when an enthusiastic reader who happened to be a minister cut to the chase: “This book is so important, you have to read it,” he told listeners. “And if you can’t afford to buy the book,” he said, “steal the book.” It may have been metaphorical, but he had made his point. Around the same time, I went to Chicago on book tour and excitedly went into what was then the main book store in Hyde Park — Borders Books on 53rd Street — and was anxious to see my newborn on the shelf. I looked all over for it in Nonfiction and in History and in African-American Studies. I couldn’t find it anywhere and started to get worried that it wasn’t getting the placement it should have gotten. I went to the front desk to ask about it. “Oh that book,” the clerk said. “We had to put it behind the counter. It was walking out on its own.” And so there it was next to Jay Z’s memoir and Terry McMillan’s newest best seller and another of John Grisham’s blockbusters. Never in a million years would I have expected a deeply researched work of narrative nonfiction to need to be locked behind the counter with those commercial heavyweights. Now, 14 years later, The Warmth of Other Suns is available for a limited time for $1.99 on Amazon in Kindle format to kick off Black History Month. Thrilled for every new reader who will now have even more chances to know Ida Mae, Robert and George and the courage of the people of the Great Migration. May we come to a deeper appreciation of our country’s history this month because Black History is American History. _______________ The first photo is of me at the indie bookstore, Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn, where I signed Warmth and Caste for the holidays, in addition to signings at McNally Jackson, Barnes & Noble, and Cafe Con Libros. #thewarmthofothersuns #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #blackhistorymonth #history
I will never forget taking my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, out into the world and hearing the most startling endorsement it has ever received. On a community radio show in NYC, we were soberly discussing the impact of the Great Migration and the fortitude of the ancestors when an enthusiastic reader who happened to be a minister cut to the chase: “This book is so important, you have to read it,” he told listeners. “And if you can’t afford to buy the book,” he said, “steal the book.” It may have been metaphorical, but he had made his point. Around the same time, I went to Chicago on book tour and excitedly went into what was then the main book store in Hyde Park — Borders Books on 53rd Street — and was anxious to see my newborn on the shelf. I looked all over for it in Nonfiction and in History and in African-American Studies. I couldn’t find it anywhere and started to get worried that it wasn’t getting the placement it should have gotten. I went to the front desk to ask about it. “Oh that book,” the clerk said. “We had to put it behind the counter. It was walking out on its own.” And so there it was next to Jay Z’s memoir and Terry McMillan’s newest best seller and another of John Grisham’s blockbusters. Never in a million years would I have expected a deeply researched work of narrative nonfiction to need to be locked behind the counter with those commercial heavyweights. Now, 14 years later, The Warmth of Other Suns is available for a limited time for $1.99 on Amazon in Kindle format to kick off Black History Month. Thrilled for every new reader who will now have even more chances to know Ida Mae, Robert and George and the courage of the people of the Great Migration. May we come to a deeper appreciation of our country’s history this month because Black History is American History. _______________ The first photo is of me at the indie bookstore, Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn, where I signed Warmth and Caste for the holidays, in addition to signings at McNally Jackson, Barnes & Noble, and Cafe Con Libros. #thewarmthofothersuns #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #blackhistorymonth #history
I will never forget taking my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, out into the world and hearing the most startling endorsement it has ever received. On a community radio show in NYC, we were soberly discussing the impact of the Great Migration and the fortitude of the ancestors when an enthusiastic reader who happened to be a minister cut to the chase: “This book is so important, you have to read it,” he told listeners. “And if you can’t afford to buy the book,” he said, “steal the book.” It may have been metaphorical, but he had made his point. Around the same time, I went to Chicago on book tour and excitedly went into what was then the main book store in Hyde Park — Borders Books on 53rd Street — and was anxious to see my newborn on the shelf. I looked all over for it in Nonfiction and in History and in African-American Studies. I couldn’t find it anywhere and started to get worried that it wasn’t getting the placement it should have gotten. I went to the front desk to ask about it. “Oh that book,” the clerk said. “We had to put it behind the counter. It was walking out on its own.” And so there it was next to Jay Z’s memoir and Terry McMillan’s newest best seller and another of John Grisham’s blockbusters. Never in a million years would I have expected a deeply researched work of narrative nonfiction to need to be locked behind the counter with those commercial heavyweights. Now, 14 years later, The Warmth of Other Suns is available for a limited time for $1.99 on Amazon in Kindle format to kick off Black History Month. Thrilled for every new reader who will now have even more chances to know Ida Mae, Robert and George and the courage of the people of the Great Migration. May we come to a deeper appreciation of our country’s history this month because Black History is American History. _______________ The first photo is of me at the indie bookstore, Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn, where I signed Warmth and Caste for the holidays, in addition to signings at McNally Jackson, Barnes & Noble, and Cafe Con Libros. #thewarmthofothersuns #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #blackhistorymonth #history
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
For the record, the cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is according to the secessionists themselves. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was widely seen as anti-slavery. The SC General Assembly cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” which threatened their right to own human property. Weeks later, on January 9, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina in secession and was even more explicit: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world….” The Confederates were clear as to their motivations even if people in our era choose not to be. ————— Slide 7: The Mississippi Statehouse in Jackson, MS, where members of the Convention of Secession voted on January 9, 1861, to leave the Union. Slide 8: The South Carolina General Assembly in Charleston after a unanimous vote by the delegates to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860, setting in motion the Civil War. #history #civilwarhistory #americanhistory
What a thrill to have gotten the chance to spend time with James Earl Jones, who turns 93 today, and to hear firsthand that the most iconic voice of our time — the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and the voice of CNN — almost didn’t make it out to the world. He was born on this day in 1931, in Arkabutla, Mississippi, to artistically inclined but struggling domestic workers who separated after he was born. He was four years old when his grandparents, under the pressures of caste, spirited him out of Mississippi and settled in Michigan, on land the grandfather bought sight unseen, during the Great Migration. But James Earl Jones was so traumatized by the loss of all he had known and of especially his mother, who had gone off to find work elsewhere, that he developed a debilitating stutter and then went more than five years without speaking. “In Sunday school,” he once told the Daily Mail of London, “I’d try to read my lessons and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.” So he talked to the hogs and the cows and the chickens on the farm. “They don’t care how you sound,” he once said. “They just want to hear your voice.” He was still virtually mute when he entered high school. There, an English teacher took an interest and had him recite poems in class and helped cure him of his silence. He went on to the University of Michigan for pre-med but switched to theater after taking acting classes. He would go on to play King Lear and Othello, win Tony Awards for his work in August Wilson’s “Fences” and in “The Great White Hope” and appear in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams.” It was an honor to sit down with him a few years ago for Smithsonian Magazine as an extension of The Warmth of Other Suns, the book that set me on my journey to understand caste in America and the ways it still haunts us as Americans, and to situate this legend of our culture in the timeline of American history. #caste #thewarmthofothersuns #history #jamesearljones
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps the most transformative visionary in American history, would have been 95 years old today. He devoted his life to what he ultimately realized was a caste system in his own country, which has tragically reasserted itself in our era of rupture. How reassuring it was, before my trip to India, to learn from the archives of the King Institute at Stanford that Dr. King had made this connection during his own historic trip to India. It was exactly 65 years ago next month that he and Coretta Scott King journeyed to the land of Gandhi, the inspiration for nonviolent protest, and visited a school for students then known as untouchables, now known as Dalits. The principal introduced Dr. King. “Young people,” the principal said, “I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.” Dr. King was floored. “For a moment,” he would later recall, “I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.” Then he thought about the lives of the people he was fighting for—20 million souls consigned to the lowest rank in America for centuries, “still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty,” quarantined in isolated ghettoes, exiled in their own country. And he said to himself, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” In that moment, he realized that the Land of the Free had imposed a caste system not that far removed from the caste system of India and that it lurked beneath the forces he was fighting in America. He later described this awakening in his 1965 Fourth of July sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. India had a profound effect. “These experiences,” he said, “will remain dear to me as long as the cords of memory shall lengthen.” Listen to his stirring voice as he recounts hearing ‘caste’ applied to him and how he came to the recognition of the applicability of this ancient concept to understanding our country. _____ Video clip from my Aug 2020 interview about Caste, with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. To watch in full: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o3C1HItZI8k #history #caste #MLK #MLKDay
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps the most transformative visionary in American history, would have been 95 years old today. He devoted his life to what he ultimately realized was a caste system in his own country, which has tragically reasserted itself in our era of rupture. How reassuring it was, before my trip to India, to learn from the archives of the King Institute at Stanford that Dr. King had made this connection during his own historic trip to India. It was exactly 65 years ago next month that he and Coretta Scott King journeyed to the land of Gandhi, the inspiration for nonviolent protest, and visited a school for students then known as untouchables, now known as Dalits. The principal introduced Dr. King. “Young people,” the principal said, “I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.” Dr. King was floored. “For a moment,” he would later recall, “I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.” Then he thought about the lives of the people he was fighting for—20 million souls consigned to the lowest rank in America for centuries, “still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty,” quarantined in isolated ghettoes, exiled in their own country. And he said to himself, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” In that moment, he realized that the Land of the Free had imposed a caste system not that far removed from the caste system of India and that it lurked beneath the forces he was fighting in America. He later described this awakening in his 1965 Fourth of July sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. India had a profound effect. “These experiences,” he said, “will remain dear to me as long as the cords of memory shall lengthen.” Listen to his stirring voice as he recounts hearing ‘caste’ applied to him and how he came to the recognition of the applicability of this ancient concept to understanding our country. _____ Video clip from my Aug 2020 interview about Caste, with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. To watch in full: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o3C1HItZI8k #history #caste #MLK #MLKDay
Six years ago this very day, I boarded a 7 pm flight to London en route to Delhi for my first ever trip to India after two decades of studying the concept of caste. I knew not a soul, so it took months of planning and hand-wringing over visas and bureaucracies to get there. I arrived in the night fog of Delhi 22 hours later with the sole purpose of communing with like-minded scholars, whom I had reached out to, sight unseen, to join an intimate conference on the subject that had been my life’s mission since my research on caste for The Warmth of Other Suns. I carried with me my marked-up copy of The Annihilation of Caste, by the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. I channeled the spirit of the only caste scholar to have lived in the Jim Crow South and in India, Gerald Berreman, a lodestar for the case I was making about the parallels in both countries. But what propelled me more than anything, beyond the urgent threats to our democracy over the ruptures of caste, was a lifetime of chafing under caste myself — the pushback and indignities I’ve faced as a living, breathing caste experiment, obstacles that would become the scenes and sinew of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I told no one what my project was or that I was even working on a book. It is my process, as anyone who knows me knows, to never, ever talk to anyone about what I’m working on — a vow I’ve kept since The Warmth of Other Suns, where I learned the occupational hazards of sharing new ways of seeing the world before you publish them. In that circle of scholars in Delhi, I finally found people who spoke my language. They seemed delighted to hear an African-American woman’s expertise and kindred truth, the parallels I had long identified in these systems of oppression. On these trips, I go as a scholar not a sightseer, so the pictures I take are for research purposes, to record images to convert into the word pictures of narrative nonfiction. But here are a few: one with a Dalit schoIar who confided to me the travails she had suffered, and a meeting with an attendee’s copy of Warmth on the table. One day, I hope I get to see the Taj Majal. Until then, the mission continues.
Six years ago this very day, I boarded a 7 pm flight to London en route to Delhi for my first ever trip to India after two decades of studying the concept of caste. I knew not a soul, so it took months of planning and hand-wringing over visas and bureaucracies to get there. I arrived in the night fog of Delhi 22 hours later with the sole purpose of communing with like-minded scholars, whom I had reached out to, sight unseen, to join an intimate conference on the subject that had been my life’s mission since my research on caste for The Warmth of Other Suns. I carried with me my marked-up copy of The Annihilation of Caste, by the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. I channeled the spirit of the only caste scholar to have lived in the Jim Crow South and in India, Gerald Berreman, a lodestar for the case I was making about the parallels in both countries. But what propelled me more than anything, beyond the urgent threats to our democracy over the ruptures of caste, was a lifetime of chafing under caste myself — the pushback and indignities I’ve faced as a living, breathing caste experiment, obstacles that would become the scenes and sinew of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I told no one what my project was or that I was even working on a book. It is my process, as anyone who knows me knows, to never, ever talk to anyone about what I’m working on — a vow I’ve kept since The Warmth of Other Suns, where I learned the occupational hazards of sharing new ways of seeing the world before you publish them. In that circle of scholars in Delhi, I finally found people who spoke my language. They seemed delighted to hear an African-American woman’s expertise and kindred truth, the parallels I had long identified in these systems of oppression. On these trips, I go as a scholar not a sightseer, so the pictures I take are for research purposes, to record images to convert into the word pictures of narrative nonfiction. But here are a few: one with a Dalit schoIar who confided to me the travails she had suffered, and a meeting with an attendee’s copy of Warmth on the table. One day, I hope I get to see the Taj Majal. Until then, the mission continues.
Six years ago this very day, I boarded a 7 pm flight to London en route to Delhi for my first ever trip to India after two decades of studying the concept of caste. I knew not a soul, so it took months of planning and hand-wringing over visas and bureaucracies to get there. I arrived in the night fog of Delhi 22 hours later with the sole purpose of communing with like-minded scholars, whom I had reached out to, sight unseen, to join an intimate conference on the subject that had been my life’s mission since my research on caste for The Warmth of Other Suns. I carried with me my marked-up copy of The Annihilation of Caste, by the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. I channeled the spirit of the only caste scholar to have lived in the Jim Crow South and in India, Gerald Berreman, a lodestar for the case I was making about the parallels in both countries. But what propelled me more than anything, beyond the urgent threats to our democracy over the ruptures of caste, was a lifetime of chafing under caste myself — the pushback and indignities I’ve faced as a living, breathing caste experiment, obstacles that would become the scenes and sinew of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I told no one what my project was or that I was even working on a book. It is my process, as anyone who knows me knows, to never, ever talk to anyone about what I’m working on — a vow I’ve kept since The Warmth of Other Suns, where I learned the occupational hazards of sharing new ways of seeing the world before you publish them. In that circle of scholars in Delhi, I finally found people who spoke my language. They seemed delighted to hear an African-American woman’s expertise and kindred truth, the parallels I had long identified in these systems of oppression. On these trips, I go as a scholar not a sightseer, so the pictures I take are for research purposes, to record images to convert into the word pictures of narrative nonfiction. But here are a few: one with a Dalit schoIar who confided to me the travails she had suffered, and a meeting with an attendee’s copy of Warmth on the table. One day, I hope I get to see the Taj Majal. Until then, the mission continues.
Six years ago this very day, I boarded a 7 pm flight to London en route to Delhi for my first ever trip to India after two decades of studying the concept of caste. I knew not a soul, so it took months of planning and hand-wringing over visas and bureaucracies to get there. I arrived in the night fog of Delhi 22 hours later with the sole purpose of communing with like-minded scholars, whom I had reached out to, sight unseen, to join an intimate conference on the subject that had been my life’s mission since my research on caste for The Warmth of Other Suns. I carried with me my marked-up copy of The Annihilation of Caste, by the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. I channeled the spirit of the only caste scholar to have lived in the Jim Crow South and in India, Gerald Berreman, a lodestar for the case I was making about the parallels in both countries. But what propelled me more than anything, beyond the urgent threats to our democracy over the ruptures of caste, was a lifetime of chafing under caste myself — the pushback and indignities I’ve faced as a living, breathing caste experiment, obstacles that would become the scenes and sinew of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I told no one what my project was or that I was even working on a book. It is my process, as anyone who knows me knows, to never, ever talk to anyone about what I’m working on — a vow I’ve kept since The Warmth of Other Suns, where I learned the occupational hazards of sharing new ways of seeing the world before you publish them. In that circle of scholars in Delhi, I finally found people who spoke my language. They seemed delighted to hear an African-American woman’s expertise and kindred truth, the parallels I had long identified in these systems of oppression. On these trips, I go as a scholar not a sightseer, so the pictures I take are for research purposes, to record images to convert into the word pictures of narrative nonfiction. But here are a few: one with a Dalit schoIar who confided to me the travails she had suffered, and a meeting with an attendee’s copy of Warmth on the table. One day, I hope I get to see the Taj Majal. Until then, the mission continues.
Six years ago this very day, I boarded a 7 pm flight to London en route to Delhi for my first ever trip to India after two decades of studying the concept of caste. I knew not a soul, so it took months of planning and hand-wringing over visas and bureaucracies to get there. I arrived in the night fog of Delhi 22 hours later with the sole purpose of communing with like-minded scholars, whom I had reached out to, sight unseen, to join an intimate conference on the subject that had been my life’s mission since my research on caste for The Warmth of Other Suns. I carried with me my marked-up copy of The Annihilation of Caste, by the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. I channeled the spirit of the only caste scholar to have lived in the Jim Crow South and in India, Gerald Berreman, a lodestar for the case I was making about the parallels in both countries. But what propelled me more than anything, beyond the urgent threats to our democracy over the ruptures of caste, was a lifetime of chafing under caste myself — the pushback and indignities I’ve faced as a living, breathing caste experiment, obstacles that would become the scenes and sinew of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I told no one what my project was or that I was even working on a book. It is my process, as anyone who knows me knows, to never, ever talk to anyone about what I’m working on — a vow I’ve kept since The Warmth of Other Suns, where I learned the occupational hazards of sharing new ways of seeing the world before you publish them. In that circle of scholars in Delhi, I finally found people who spoke my language. They seemed delighted to hear an African-American woman’s expertise and kindred truth, the parallels I had long identified in these systems of oppression. On these trips, I go as a scholar not a sightseer, so the pictures I take are for research purposes, to record images to convert into the word pictures of narrative nonfiction. But here are a few: one with a Dalit schoIar who confided to me the travails she had suffered, and a meeting with an attendee’s copy of Warmth on the table. One day, I hope I get to see the Taj Majal. Until then, the mission continues.
May we take this moment to pause and reflect, to catch our collective breath in the quiet of this season for the work that lies ahead for all of us, if we are to make this a better world. Ever grateful for the enthusiasm, love and support from fans across the world who continue to create these evocative set pieces about the transformative message and history contained within Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The first slide is the just-released Polish edition of Caste — the 19th foreign translation of this book in the continuation of this humanitarian mission. My thanks to @jeleenka, @hooked_to_books, @books_and_heels, @duxburybookclub and @this_father_life for these beautiful images. Wishing everyone peace and transcendence this season and beyond. #holidayseason #history #caste #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #isabelwilkerson #thewarmthofothersuns
May we take this moment to pause and reflect, to catch our collective breath in the quiet of this season for the work that lies ahead for all of us, if we are to make this a better world. Ever grateful for the enthusiasm, love and support from fans across the world who continue to create these evocative set pieces about the transformative message and history contained within Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The first slide is the just-released Polish edition of Caste — the 19th foreign translation of this book in the continuation of this humanitarian mission. My thanks to @jeleenka, @hooked_to_books, @books_and_heels, @duxburybookclub and @this_father_life for these beautiful images. Wishing everyone peace and transcendence this season and beyond. #holidayseason #history #caste #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #isabelwilkerson #thewarmthofothersuns
May we take this moment to pause and reflect, to catch our collective breath in the quiet of this season for the work that lies ahead for all of us, if we are to make this a better world. Ever grateful for the enthusiasm, love and support from fans across the world who continue to create these evocative set pieces about the transformative message and history contained within Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The first slide is the just-released Polish edition of Caste — the 19th foreign translation of this book in the continuation of this humanitarian mission. My thanks to @jeleenka, @hooked_to_books, @books_and_heels, @duxburybookclub and @this_father_life for these beautiful images. Wishing everyone peace and transcendence this season and beyond. #holidayseason #history #caste #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #isabelwilkerson #thewarmthofothersuns
May we take this moment to pause and reflect, to catch our collective breath in the quiet of this season for the work that lies ahead for all of us, if we are to make this a better world. Ever grateful for the enthusiasm, love and support from fans across the world who continue to create these evocative set pieces about the transformative message and history contained within Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The first slide is the just-released Polish edition of Caste — the 19th foreign translation of this book in the continuation of this humanitarian mission. My thanks to @jeleenka, @hooked_to_books, @books_and_heels, @duxburybookclub and @this_father_life for these beautiful images. Wishing everyone peace and transcendence this season and beyond. #holidayseason #history #caste #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #isabelwilkerson #thewarmthofothersuns
May we take this moment to pause and reflect, to catch our collective breath in the quiet of this season for the work that lies ahead for all of us, if we are to make this a better world. Ever grateful for the enthusiasm, love and support from fans across the world who continue to create these evocative set pieces about the transformative message and history contained within Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The first slide is the just-released Polish edition of Caste — the 19th foreign translation of this book in the continuation of this humanitarian mission. My thanks to @jeleenka, @hooked_to_books, @books_and_heels, @duxburybookclub and @this_father_life for these beautiful images. Wishing everyone peace and transcendence this season and beyond. #holidayseason #history #caste #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #isabelwilkerson #thewarmthofothersuns