“This story touches anyone who has been an immigrant, or who has ancestors who have been immigrants, particularly recently,” says Isabel Wilkerson. “It’s deeply personal — and emotional — for many people, no matter their particular background or ethnicity. For example, at a book event in New York, an elderly woman who had immigrated to the United States from Greece stood in line to thank me for the story I share… and to say, with deep emotion, that in many ways, it was also her story.”

Isabel’s comments refer to her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” which tells the story of the journey of approximately six million African Americans who left the South for new but uncertain destinies in the North and West between World War I and the 1970s through the Great Migration.

Isabel, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, spent fifteen years and interviewed 1,200 people to complete her best-selling work of narrative nonfiction, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year in 2010. Her book was also Dayton Literary Peace Prize nonfiction runner-up in 2011.

She will be speaking about her book and its topic at the University of Dayton on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Union Ballroom as part of the University of Dayton Speaker Series. Her talk is free and open to the public; a book signing will follow the talk. Parking is available in lots C and P.

Although Isabel’s parents were part of the Great Migration, she says, “My parents didn’t talk about it, which was actually common for many who were part of this experience. Many people assume I must have grown up hearing about this, but I didn’t. In fact, if anything, not hearing about it—yet knowing that this took place—was a strong inspiration for me wanting to research and learn more.”

In researching her book, she recreated the journeys of three people who each, through their particular stories, represent the experiences of the numerous African Americans who migrated to start their lives anew with the hope for fresh opportunities and relief from the strictures of prejudice. Her parents accompanied her on one of those journeys, following Robert Foster’s route out of Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career in the West.

“In that era, he couldn’t have safely stopped to stay at a motel. He had to keep driving without stopping to get from Louisiana to Arizona. So that is what I tried to recreate, because that’s what he had to do,” Isabel says. “I became weary and started to veer off the road. My parents finally said—stop! We’ll tell you about this. We lived this.”

Finally, Isabel began to learn a little bit about her parents’ experiences. Her mother was from Georgia, and her father, who was a one of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II (the first African-American military pilots in the United States armed forces) was from southern Virginia; both migrated to Washington D.C.

The title of her book comes from a poem by the great African American author Richard Wright, from his landmark book Black Boy: “…I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently…bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.”

“For the past two years, I have myself been on the road from Anchorage to Amsterdam to talk about the Great Migration and my book,” Isabel says. “What I’ve learned in hearing people’s response to this story is that history is a living thing; the experience of discovering our history, perhaps for the first time or encountering it in a new way, is essential to our own identity.”

OTHER UPCOMING LITERARY EVENTS

• Wright State University’s English Department Visiting Writers Series will present author and activist Elizabeth Massie, Bram Stoker Award winner for her novella Stephen and author of novels and short story collections, in two events open to the public: a “brown bag” lunch discussion and activity on charity work and bullying activism on Nov. 13, 12:30-1:50, in 033 Rike Hall, and a reading, discussion and book signing on Nov. 14, 3:35-5:00, in 286 Millett Hall. Visit www.elizabethmassie.com for more information about her work.