Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson   Tags: african americans, chicago, common read, cornerstone, detroit, great migration, rural-urban migration, st. louis  

Click on book image to search for copies of the book in Rod Library.

Click on the Google Books Preview to read the first four chapters.

A Cedar Valley Campus/Community Book Discussion Series

• Images and More..., Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2012.
• Audio Slide Show: Photographs from the South Side of Chicago in the Early Nineteen-Forties, New Yorker site.
• Images of Black History, The Root
  

An African American worker at the Richmond Shipyards (1943), Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Tuskegee airmen (1945), Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Students at the University of Northern Iowa outside of Rod Library
Photo by Elaine Chen, Rod Library

 COMMON READ @ UNI

Join the UNI Cornerstone courses in reading this year's common read book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson.  One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year. Scheduled author visit to UNI on 8/22/12, 7 pm, GBPAC Great Hall.

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.

Isabel Wilkerson, Wikimedia Commons, (CC) Photo by Larry D. Moore

Scheduled Author Visit to UNI 

• Isabel Wilkerson Scheduled author visit to UNI on 8/22/12, 7pm, GBPAC Great Hall

Author's Official Website

• Isabel Wilkerson's Official Website
  

Biographical Information 

• Isabel Wilkerson Isabel Wilkerson. (n.d.). in Contemporary Authors Online. Retrieved from Gale Biography in Context.
• Isabel Wilkerson Isabel Wilkerson. (2011) in Newsmakers Online. Retrieved from Gale Biography In Context

Interviews

• Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North Fresh Air From WHYY. National Public Radio. July 15, 2011.
• The Great Migration Tell Me More. National Public Radio. September 29, 2010.
• Author Interview Isabel Wilkerson Official Website.
  

Rod Library Chat Box. Ask your questions now!

Students are welcome to come to one or all of these sessions. Each session will cover a different topic relating to the common read and will correlate with the assignments being offered.

To sign up for these workshops, go to http://www.uni.edu/unialc and click on "Courses and Workshops."  This will prompt you to submit your CatID and then you can sign up for this or other workshops.

COM professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, author of the acclaimed book "The Warmth of Other Suns," talks about how writing the book provided a connection to her family's past.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Warmth of Other Suns" discusses the legacy of the "Great Migration" of African Americans and explains why it is so deeply embedded in American culture.