Isabel Wilkerson Instagram – It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts.
It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me.
Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth.
It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.”
Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands.
Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible.
“My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.”
On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads.
And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn.
#thewarmthofothersuns | Posted on 07/Sep/2024 23:30:13
