The Warmth of Other Suns Character Analysis

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney is the first of the three people whose stories Isabel Wilkerson tells in The Warmth of Other Suns. She is born and raised in poverty in rural Mississippi, where she… read analysis of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney

George Swanson Starling

The second of Isabel Wilkerson’s three protagonists, George Swanson Starling is a brilliant, socially conscious working-class man from the small central Florida town of Eustis. He moves to New York in 1945. When George… read analysis of George Swanson Starling

Robert Joseph Pershing Foster

Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a surgeon from Monroe, Louisiana who migrates to California in the early 1950s, is the book’s third protagonist. He grows up in a well-respected family in Monroe, where his parents are… read analysis of Robert Joseph Pershing Foster

Alice Clement

Alice is Robert Foster’s wife and Rufus and Pearl Clement’s daughter. She and Robert meet when they are both in college, and after they marry, they have two daughters but live apart for… read analysis of Alice Clement

Babe Blye

Babe Blye is Reuben Blye’s younger brother and one of George Starling’s closest lifelong friends. As foremen in the 1930s and 1940s, he and Reuben help George negotiate better wages for the citrus… read analysis of Babe Blye

Reuben Blye

Reuben Blye is Babe Blye’s older brother and one of George Starling’s dearest friends. After a traumatic childhood in Jim Crow-era Eustis, Florida, he moves to New York, where he works a… read analysis of Reuben Blye

Ray Charles

Ray Charles, the renowned soul musician, is one of Robert Foster’s most famous (and most loyal) patients in Los Angeles. After Ray nearly cuts his hand off in an accident, Robert saves it through… read analysis of Ray Charles

Rufus Clement

Rufus Clement, Alice Clement’s father and Robert Foster’s father-in-law, is the president of Atlanta University and a major Black social and political leader of the mid-20th century. In 1953, he’s elected to the… read analysis of Rufus Clement

Inez Cunningham

Inez is George Starling’s wife and Sonya and Gerard Starling’s mother. Her parents die when she is young, and she grows up with her religious fanatic aunt in the backwoods near George’s hometown… read analysis of Inez Cunningham

Madison Foster

Madison Foster is Robert Foster’s older brother. He’s a role model for Robert growing up, especially because he’s also a doctor. But unlike Robert, Madison chooses to continue practicing in their segregated hometown of… read analysis of Madison Foster

Madison Foster, Jr.

Madison Foster, Jr. is Robert Foster’s nephew (his brother Madison Foster’s son). He grows up in the South and then moves to the North to complete a doctorate in sociology. He always admires… read analysis of Madison Foster, Jr.

Professor Foster

Robert Foster’s father, whom everyone calls “Professor Foster,” is the well-respected principal of the only Black high school in Monroe, Louisiana and a prominent preacher at the local church. As a result, all the… read analysis of Professor Foster

George Gladney

George Gladney is Ida Mae’s husband. He is stoic, honest, generous, wise, and extremely hardworking—his marriage to Ida Mae is far more loving and supportive than George Starling and Robert Foster’s marriages. After… read analysis of George Gladney

James Gladney

James is Ida Mae and George Gladney’s third child and eldest son. At age three, he migrates north with his parents and his sister Velma. And as an adult, he works as a… read analysis of James Gladney

Joe Lee

Joe Lee is George Gladney’s cousin, who lives near Edd Pearson’s plantation in Mississippi. He has a reputation for stealing things, so when his neighbor Addie B. loses her turkeys, she blames him… read analysis of Joe Lee

Willis V. McCall

Willis V. McCall is the sheriff of Lake County, Florida (where George Starling’s hometown of Eustis is located). He is a notorious racist and segregationist, and he frequently abuses and murders Black suspects throughout… read analysis of Willis V. McCall

David McIntosh

– David McIntosh is one of the two men, along with George Gladney, who falls in love with Ida Mae when she’s a young woman in Mississippi and visits her every Sunday in an… read analysis of David McIntosh

Harry T. Moore

Harry T. Moore was an early civil rights leader, largely forgotten today, who served as the head of the NAACP in Florida. He fought tirelessly to improve conditions for Black workers and investigate lynchings. George… read analysis of Harry T. Moore

Pat

Pat is Inez Cunningham’s niece. After her mother dies, Pat moves in with Inez and George. While Inez treats Pat terribly and kicks her out of the house, George becomes a distant but… read analysis of Pat

Edd Pearson

Edd Pearson is the Mississippi planter for whom Ida Mae and George Gladney sharecrop in the 1920s and 1930s. Compared to other planters, Pearson is relatively just and humane—for instance, he keeps fair balance sheets… read analysis of Edd Pearson

George Starling’s Father

George Starling’s father is a troubled Florida sharecropper and construction worker who frequently clashes with his son. He drinks and beats George’s mother before their divorce, and later, he discourages George from going to… read analysis of George Starling’s Father

Gerard Starling

Gerard is George and Inez’s son. To his parents’ disappointment, he lets the vices he finds in Harlem get the better of him: he starts doing drugs and stealing as a teenager, and then… read analysis of Gerard Starling

Wilkerson's Mother

Isabel Wilkerson’s mother Rubye was a Black schoolteacher who migrated from rural Rome, Georgia to Washington, D.C. in the 1950s. Wilkerson traces her initial curiosity about the Great Migration to seeing a photo of… read analysis of Wilkerson's Mother

Minor Characters

Robert Foster’s Mother

Robert Foster’s mother, a strict, high-minded socialite from New Orleans, works alongside his father as a schoolteacher in Monroe. In fact, she’s Robert’s seventh grade teacher. Robert looks forward to impressing her by finishing medical school and succeeding as a doctor, but she dies of cancer before he graduates.

Eleanor Gladney

Eleanor is Ida Mae and George Gladney’s fourth child. Ida Mae is pregnant with Eleanor when she, George, James, and Velma migrate north—but she chooses to give birth in Mississippi. As an adult, Eleanor lives with Ida Mae in the family’s three-floor bungalow.

Velma Gladney

Velma is Ida Mae and George Gladney’s second daughter (after Elma, who dies as an infant). She is six years old when the family migrates north. She grows up in Chicago and becomes a teacher, but then she dies tragically in a car crash.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King, the renowned Black minister who led the civil rights movement, speaks in Ida Mae’s neighborhood in Chicago in 1966 and gets assassinated in Memphis in 1968 (which sparks protests and riots around the U.S.).

John Starling

John Starling, George Starling’s grandfather, is a moody sharecropper who grew up in the Carolinas, allegedly murdered his abusive boss, and then moved to Florida.

Sonya Starling

Sonya is George and Inez’s daughter. To George’s dismay, she gets pregnant at age 13 on a trip to Eustis and then moves there permanently. She and George never have much of a relationship, and she dies very young in a car crash.

Miss Theenie

Theenia Brandon, whom everyone calls “Miss Theenie,” is Ida Mae’s mother. She is distraught when all of her children leave Mississippi for the North, but she passes her generosity and staid moral values on to them, and this helps them succeed in their new cities.

Isabel Wilkerson

The author of The Warmth of Other Suns is an influential, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. She spent more than a decade researching and writing this book—her first—in an effort to show the public how the Great Migration transformed Black life in the U.S.

Addie B.

Addie B. is Ida Mae’s neighbor on the Pearson plantation in Mississippi in the 1930s. She falsely accuses Joe Lee of stealing her turkeys.

Barbara

Barbara is Robert Foster’s live-in nurse at the end of his life in the 1990s.

Dr. William Beck

William Beck is the prominent Black doctor and medical school professor who helps Robert Foster, his former student, settle into life in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

Irene

Irene is Ida Mae’s sister. She and her husband migrated from Mississippi to Wisconsin during World War I, then settled down in Milwaukee. She helps Ida Mae and George Gladney move north.

Pearl Clement

Pearl Clement is Alice Clement’s mother, Rufus Clement’s wife, and Robert Foster’s mother-in-law. After Rufus and Alice die, she moves in with Robert, but they can’t stand each other, so she eventually moves out.

Joseph Brandon

Joseph Brandon is Ida Mae’s father. He dies during her childhood.

The Warmth of Other Suns Characters