The Warmth of the Other Suns



The Warmth of the Other Suns

Introduction and Discussion

During the first half of the twentieth century, several million African Americans left the southern United States to join the North, the Midwest and the West in a movement known as the Great Migration (1916-1930). They hope to escape segregation and violence they were always victims in the South, access to voting as well as improved living conditions. Northern Industrial dynamism, the need for labor resulting from the intensification of military production during World War provides the conditions of this emigration (Carden,1978).

From 1910 to 1930, the black population of the only cities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia passes of 226 000-902 000 individuals. The concentration of blacks in Northern cities leads to the formation of neighborhoods with high African American majority as the South Side of Chicago or Harlem in New York (Carden,1978).

The Great Migration is accompanied by an important cultural transfer: specific musical forms in southern countries, such as boogie-woogie and the blues, are spreading in the North. The center of gravity of music jazz moves from New Orleans to Chicago and New York. The neighborhood of Harlem in New York is the birthplace of a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, whose fame goes beyond the borders of the country

"Great Migration" is a vast movement of population which led between 1915 and 1970 six million blacks in the southern United States to the north, east and west, to give themselves a chance to feel "the warmth of other suns" - an expression given by the author Isabel Wilkerson.

It was one of the most important revolutions and the most underrated in the history of the United States," says historian John Stauffer in the Wall Street Journal. "Before, over 90% of blacks lived in the South, he says. After, nearly half were living elsewhere. The exodus has reshaped the face of New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other smaller cities (Berk,1974). "

Recognized journalist, herself the daughter of a migrant couple, Isabel Wilkerson has spent fifteen years in this project. It is for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the people of Oklahoma in The Grapes of Wrath, John Stauffer estimates. She humanized the story, giving it an exceptional emotional and psychological intensity (Berk,1974). " Wilkinson says this in the form of "big" story by "small", that of ordinary individuals who have made ??it, fleeing a segregation that was creeping everywhere. The Warmth of Other Suns revolves around three characters: Ida Mae, George Starling, who flee their natives in Florida to New York in 1945, after being threatened with lynching for trying to organize a strike of citrus pickers and Robert Foster, a brilliant young surgeon who leaves Louisiana to California in 1951, to escape a career destined to mediocrity (Carden,1978).

The book evolves like a romance between these three main characters, while putting their stories in a broader picture. With this particular account, the singular destinies of Ida Mae, George Starling and ...