Meet the Author: Isabel Wilkerson, 'The Warmth of Other Suns,' at Iolani School

Russell Motter, chair of the History Department at Iolani School, has informed History Education Hawaii that a public talk by Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of the highly acclaimed book on the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, is scheduled for this coming Friday, January 7, at Iolani School’s Seto Hall.

This free event is open to the public and scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. A book-signing will follow. Hawaii history educators, history students and historians are encouraged to attend and meet Ms. Wilkerson.

It was one of the most important population shifts of the 20th century — an exodus of nearly six million black Americans from the South to the cities of the Northeast, Midwest and West — yet few people have substantively studied the effects of what is now known as the Great Migration.

Enter Isabel Wilkerson, who as the New York Times Chicago Bureau Chief in 1994 became the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Her debut book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, puts a human face on that experience.

“There was a rich store of experience and adventure and narrative to be mined. There were voices that needed to be heard, and I wanted to hear those voices before it was too late. I needed people who left in three different decades to show the scope and breadth of the migration. I was looking for people who had distinctive voices of their own, people who you could identify with. People who wanted to share the good and bad, who weren’t representing themselves as perfect. That allowed it to be a more human story.”