The Origins of Our Discontents

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson discusses her New York Times-bestselling books, The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste, and sheds light on how we might devise a more balanced society free of artificial hierarchies.
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Speaking Engagements

Studying discrimination is incomplete without an examination of America’s history and its particularly pernicious caste system, the effects of which reverberate across our society. In impactful lectures that bring audiences to understand our country’s past and present—including a look at the Great Migration of Black Americans in the 20th century—Wilkerson spotlights the longstanding origins of divisions in our country and the implications of enforcing hierarchy in our social systems, industries, and economy. She also posits that America can exceed the destructive biases we have created and offers ideas on how to seek out the common humanity that unites us.

PHYSICAL & DIGITAL BOOKS

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Isabel Wilkerson wanted to better understand the longstanding origins of division in America. The result of her years’ worth of research is Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent. The book is a New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick that has been called “an instant American classic” (The New York Times) that “should be at the top of every American’s reading list.” (Chicago Tribune). Her previous work, The Warmth of Other Suns, is a National Book Critics Circle Award winner that chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

 

Digital Content

DISCUSSION GUIDES

With growing conversations around the systemic injustice in America, having honest dialogues about the divides that disconnect us is more vital than ever. With a comprehensive set of discussion questions, teams can use Wilkerson’s works as a jumping-off point to discuss how an understanding of racism and the roots of caste can bring about systemic change. Click here to download your discussion guide. 

PBS News Hour

PBS NewsHour | Isabel Wilkerson joined PBS NewsHour to discuss her New York Times-bestselling book, and Oprah’s Book Club Pick, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent.

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“A huge hit...The connection she made with our audience was evidenced by the standing ovation at the end of her talk as well as by the dozens of people who lined up to buy her book.”
Council of State Governments
“She received a standing ovation at the conclusion. I don’t think I have ever witnessed that in my fifteen years doing these events.”
Newport Beach Libraries
“It was electrifying watching Isabel connect with the sold-out crowd...People felt blessed to be there, and inspired and empowered as they left.”
Oregon Humanities
“Her presentation was intellectually stimulating and extremely well received....All in all we are thrilled and think we will have a hard time topping it next year.”
Woman’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati
“She was fantastic and we had a blast! Sold out crowd – bursting at the seams, hanging on her words, eloquent, engaging, and gracious. Nothing but superlatives.”
Toledo-Lucas County Public Library
“She talked about serious matters in a way that was illuminating and thought-provoking [and] provided vocabulary that others will use as they continue the conversation.”
University of Minnesota Libraries
“Her program was phenomenal, without a doubt the best I have attended in my nearly 16 years working for this library.”
Forsyth County Public Library
“We were transfixed and moved by the stories of courage she shared with us. Our audience was moved and uplifted and our event was an overwhelming success.”
YWCA McLean County

Program Topics

  • Caste: Exposing America’s Invisible Scaffolding

    Beyond race and class lies a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives, behavior, and the nation’s fate. In a powerful talk that forces audiences to reimagine America’s past and present, Wilkerson spotlights the insidious undertow of caste and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture, politics, and everyday lives. She explores the pillars that underlie caste systems across civilization, underscoring these shadow structures with immersive, deeply-researched narratives, before pointing to how America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions and toward hope in our common humanity.

  • Our Racial Moment of Truth

    With the high-profile killings of unarmed Black Americans at the hands of police and civilians, protests are mounting and debates intensifying. These events have left many people asking just how far we have really come since the days of Jim Crow—and the need for dialogue has never been more acute. In this timely lecture, Isabel Wilkerson addresses the persistence of racial injustice as a national challenge and what history can teach us as we work to resolve it.

  • The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

    In her bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the greatest untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of Black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities in search of a better life. To this day we have barely understood the full impact of this movement that was driven not by one single leader, but by six million Americans seeking political asylum in their own country. Wilkerson traces the migration over several generations, highlights how it reshaped culture and politics to this day, and posits how to move forward from the current racial challenges and disparities we now face in our country.

Caste

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

 “An instant American classic.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Available in: hardcover, eBook, audiobook 
496 pages; August 4th, 2020

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Caste

“Extraordinary…one of the most powerful nonfiction books I’d ever encountered…an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far….Caste deepens our tragic sense of American history….It’s a book that seeks to shatter a paralysis of will. It’s a book that changes the weather inside a reader.”

—The New York Times

“Magnificent . . . a trailblazing work on the birth of inequality . . . Caste offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love, this book may well help save us.”

—O: The Oprah Magazine

“It should be at the top of every American’s reading list.”

—Chicago Tribune
Learn more about the book
The Warmth of Other Suns

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

   
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER
HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER 
DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times  • USA Today • O: The Oprah Magazine • Amazon • Publishers Weekly •  Salon • Newsday  • The Daily Beast
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New Yorker •  The Washington Post • The Economist • Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle •  Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch  • The Christian Science Monitor

Available in paperback, hardcover and eBook
640 pages; October 4th, 2011

 

Learn more about the book
The Warmth of Other Suns

“A landmark piece of nonfiction . . . sure to hold many surprises for readers of any race or experience….[Wilkerson’s] closeness with, and profound affection for, her subjects reflect her deep immersion in their stories and allow the reader to share that connection.”

—The New York Times

“The Warmth of Other Suns is a brilliant and stirring epic, the first book to cover the full half-century of the Great Migration… Wilkerson combines impressive research…with great narrative and literary power. Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”

—Wall Street Journal
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