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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Warmth of Other Suns, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Migration and Freedom
History, Memory, and Identity
The Legacy of the Migration
The Economics of Racism
Love and Family
Decision, Consequence, and Regret
Summary
Analysis
1. Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Late October 1937. Ida Mae Brandon Gladney leaves Chickasaw County on an autumn night. She is nervous: she hasn’t ridden a train or left the county before, and her young children, six-year-old Velma and three-year-old James, don’t understand what’s happening. Ida Mae’s mother, Miss Theenie, didn’t want her to leave, like four of her siblings did. Miss Theenie prays for their safety and then says goodbye. Ida Mae’s brother-in-law drives her and her kids to the train station, where they meet her husband.
Wilkerson begins with portraits of her three protagonists at the precise moments when they left the South forever. She emphasizes how this single decision permanently changed the lives of migrants and their families, and she demonstrates what it looks like to incorporate the story of the Great Migration into our understanding of American identity. For Ida Mae, migration meant trading the small, self-contained universe where she had spent her entire life for a totally unknown future—which she could only hope would be better for herself and her children.
Themes
2. Wildwood, Florida, April 14, 1945. George Swanson Starling boards a northbound train in central Florida. Even the stairs to board the train are segregated, but George scarcely minds: all that matters is that he’s alive. He didn’t have time to tell everyone goodbye, but news of his departure travels fast in his small town, Eustis. He’s in trouble with the town’s powerful white citrus growers, so he’s fleeing to New York. He hopes that Inez, his wife, will eventually join him.
For George, like for Ida Mae, migrating to the North meant starting a whole new life. But whereas Ida Mae travels with her whole family and is anxious about leaving home, George migrates alone and is eager to get out of town as soon as possible. His experience reflects the terror that Black people faced in the rural South at this time, as well as the promise of freedom and anonymity that awaited them in Northern cities.
Themes
3. Monroe, Louisiana, Easter Monday, April 6, 1953. The doctor Robert Joseph Pershing Foster bids his father and brother farewell and then drives out of town. He passes the segregated hospital—where he’s not allowed to work even though he’s a talented surgeon—and heads two thousand miles west for California. He has no idea what he’ll do once he arrives, or whether his wife and daughters will ever join him.
Robert’s story further enriches Wilkerson’s portrait of the key similarities and differences between migrants. He’s a well-to-do professional, driving his own car and seeking success rather than just survival. But he also feels the same sense of limitation in the segregated South and the same intoxicating mix of hope and fear about moving elsewhere.
Themes
