Thu 6/23 @ 7:30-9PM

Author/Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson made a big splash with her 2010 book about the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, which was on reading lists and a book club selection for years. Among other things it won the 2011 Cleveland-based Anisfeld-Wolf Book Award for non-fiction.

Her latest book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, published in 2020, looks at systemic racism as a de facto caste system in America. Like her previous book, it’s getting attention and praise and sparking a lot of discussion. In it she compares the treatment of American Blacks to India’s “untouchables” and finds similarities. A NPR review of the book says, “Wilkerson’s central thesis is that caste, while a global occurrence, achieves its most violent manifestation in the treatment of American Blacks, set at the lowest level in society through historical and contemporary oppression, marginalization and violence — all legally maintained through systems of law and order.”

Wilkerson will be speaking at the Maltz Performing Arts Center as part of the Writers Center Stage series presented by the Cuyahoga County Public Library and Case Western Reserve University. Get tickets here.