Isabel Wilkerson
Born: November 07, 1961 – Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Isabel Wilkerson is an American journalist and author whose work examines race, migration, and social hierarchy in the United States. She wrote The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste; The Warmth of Other Suns won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Wilkerson became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.
Biography & Author's Journey
Isabel Wilkerson came out of Washington, D.C., with a reporter’s discipline and a historian’s memory. The daughter of Great Migration parents—her mother from Rome, Georgia, her father from Virginia, a Tuskegee Airman—she grew up sensing that family stories could illuminate national history. At Howard University, where she studied journalism and led The Hilltop, she developed the close observation that carried her into reporting at the Detroit Free Press and then The New York Times. ((https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isabel-Wilkerson))
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Community Voices
"Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is an American masterpiece"
— David Levering Lewis
"Isabel Wilkerson’s study surpasses many books on institutional racism by reframing the problem as something more vast and more concrete than that"
— Los Angeles Times
"A consummate storyteller, Isabel Wilkerson has written an important book that reminds us of a comradeship of interwoven histories"
— Los Angeles Review of Books
"Isabel Wilkerson’s book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people"
— Cornel West
"Isabel Wilkerson’s latest is an immersive, unflinching taxonomy of the unspoken social order underpinning all of American society"
— Harper’s Bazaar
"Isabel Wilkerson tells this story in prose that is so beautiful, the only reason to pause your reading is to catch your breath"
— Lawrence O’Donnell
"To read Isabel Wilkerson is to revel in the pleasure of reading"
— NPR
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