Book Review: "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson

I abhor confrontation, whether I'm involved or just a witness. This isn't something about which I am at all proud. Well, except for the fact that this character trait has kept me out of fist fights. I'm the kind of guy who thinks of a snappy comeback well after the fact, or needs to do research to provide back-up to whatever point I was trying to make earlier. I'm just not a good debater. Let's not get into the psychology of this.

Nearly 20 years ago I worked as a proofreader at a Boston accounting firm. The work was extremely dry, the work environment was fairly buttoned down, and my fellow employees were mostly young conservative types. Most days, a bunch of us younger types (the junior accountants, receptionist, interns and me, although I was a few years older than most of them) would eat lunch in the conference room.

Most times, the conversation revolved around clients, or weekend antics or local sports. I spent much of the time hunched over the Boston Globe while I ate. A few of the young dude number crunchers used to fight over my sports pages.

One day the conversation shifted from the usual topics to something more controversial, although I might have been the only person who considered it so. Well, I suspect I wasn't the only one, but certainly nobody spoke up when a few people, especially the receptionist, started bad-mouthing black people.

I don't recall how the subject came up. Could have been a report in the paper about gangs. There have always been gangs in Boston, including the infamous Whitey Bulger and his associates, but in the mid-'90s, as today, many of the gangs are made up of young, black men. In September of 1995, a gang prosecutor was assassinated in broad daylight.

The only comments I recall from this conversation came from our receptionist, a nice woman named Maria, who was, like me, a few years older than the recent college grads who we ate lunch with. I liked Maria. She was easy to talk to, good at her job, if a bit ignorant of world affairs at times.

A proud daughter of Italian immigrants, Maria wondered that day about why black people had such a hard time moving up in the world, when her family and other Italian-Americans managed to find their way in the world and be successful. It was obvious that in her opinion, black people just weren't trying hard enough, or had some deficiency that was holding them back.

Listening to her, I got that feeling that I get when I'm uncomfortable with a conversation or am witnessing an argument or physical confrontation. My nerves jangled, my skin got hot and my brain seethed with disgust. But I didn't say anything, couldn't think of what to say that would get my point across without making Maria feel bad. See, I don't ever want to make people feel bad. Because then they'll say something back, and either I won't have an answer, or I'll get too mad too quickly and end up saying something nasty.

I've thought many times over the years about the things Maria said. I've come up with replies that would've, at the least, made Maria think for a few seconds about what she'd said.

Now, all these years later, I have an answer for her. Sure, it's more than 500 pages long and has taken me weeks to read, but Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration provides irrefutable proof of the misery that black people endured for the 100 years after slavery ended, at the hands of white politicians, lawmakers, law enforcement, employers, everyday people on the street.

"You wanna know why black people have had so much difficulty getting ahead in America?" I would ask Maria now. "Because white people treated them like shit at every possible turn, and that was in the good times. Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, unfair wages and housing opportunities, refusal to allow them to drink from the same fountains or ride in the same train cars (and countless other methods of separate and unequal treatment) -- setting up an entire system designed to keep black people from making anything of themselves."

None of this information is new to people who have any clue about the history of race relations in the United States. But when you read page after page of first-hand accounts of the unimaginable suffering that the descendants of slaves went through, it makes it far too real.

But Wilkerson's book is so much more than just a recounting of terrors and heartbreak. The author interviewed more than 1,200 people in order to get as complete a picture as possible of what people in different parts of the South did to escape North or West and make a new life. Out of all of these folks, she chose three as the "leads" in the story of millions of people who made the brave and sometimes heart-rending choice to leave their homes and take a chance in someplace new.

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney left Mississippi and went to Chicago; George Swanson Starling fled Florida for New York City; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster bolted Louisiana for Los Angeles.

Each had a different reason for leaving: Gladney and her husband escaped after somebody close to them was beaten for committing a crime that turned out never to have occurred; Starling felt threatened after agitating for better wages in the citrus groves; and Foster felt stifled in the Deep South and fulfilled his longtime dream of going to Hollywood.

All of them faced discrimination in their new cities, and hard times getting started and becoming even a little bit successful. And while they missed the people, food, culture and landscapes of their hometowns, they never regretted migrating away from the brutality of the South.

Wilkerson tells their tales with such intimacy and beauty, providing incredible details at every turn of their lives and hardships and triumphs. I felt so connected to each of the three protagonists, and learned so much about a huge chapter of this nation that I knew next to nothing about beforehand.

I have no idea what, if anything, Wilkerson is working on now. I imagine she's got something in the works. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll read it.

I've gone on too long. Just go read the book.

Limp

I'm happy to report that after six weeks, I have set aside my crutches. The surgeon told me yesterday that my recovery is coming along well, and that I'm ready for the next phase.

The doctor said I might want to try one crutch for a while, or even two if the pain is too much. But I couldn't wait to ditch the crutches, and so far over the past 28 hours I'm feeling good.

I was half hoping the doctor would tell me I had to use either one crutch or a cane. I would've gone for something like this:

On Monday I'll give the therapist my new prescription. I don't know what that will entail, but he told me on Thursday that once the surgeon gave me the go-ahead for full weight bearing, he'd start pushing me. I've got plenty of work ahead of me, and the doctor said I can expect a few more months before I'm feeling as fully healed as I'm going to get.

My left hip isn't ever going to be 100%. I'm not going to be a runner again. But that's OK. I'll take up swimming or get back to walking. Maybe bike riding. Right now I'm just happy to be limping.

Crutchin'

Man am I sick of these crutches.

I've been on them for 5 1/2 weeks now, and I absolutely still need them. All along I'd assumed that I'd be off them at the six-week mark, which would be the end of this week. I have an appointment with the surgeon on Friday, which is a day after the six week anniversary of my hip surgery. But my physical therapist told me a few days ago that it's likely the surgeon will instruct me to use one crutch (or a cane) for a while before making the transition to full weight bearing.

I don't know for sure that's what the surgeon is gonna tell me, but I suspect it will be. If he gives me that choice, I'm tempted to go for the cane, so I can be wicked dope like Prime Minister Pete Nice.

My dad, who's 84, uses a black cane with a silver snake head on top. I don't think he'd part with it, but I'd like to rent one like that.

I'm glad I'm able to drive despite using crutches. Fifteen years ago I tore my Achilles tendon and couldn't drive for a few months. That sucked.

But there's just so much I can't do, or can't do as well as I'd like. I get very frustrated trying to do the simplest things, like clear the dinner table, or empty the dishwasher, or carry a book or a magazine from one room to the next. Last week I was trying to pick up some of the kids' books and toys from an ottoman in the living room, and lost my balance, and ended up dropping the crutches and falling arm first onto the ottoman.

Of course, I blamed my mishap on the books and toys, admonishing the kids to clean their stuff up so I wouldn't trip and almost fall on my face. I've always had a low threshold for frustration with simple things that don't go right, and while for the most part during my recovery I feel as though I've let little things slide by, lately I've been letting those issues bug me too much.

If I knew that at the end of my time on crutches, and after several weeks of PT and taking some time to get back in the swing of things that I'd be feeling better than I did before my surgery, perhaps I wouldn't let myself get frustrated. But I know that's not the case. The surgeon cleaned torn cartilage out of my hip joint, but he didn't repair it. He also shaved down the head of my femur, so it won't impinge on the joint.

But I notice the same physical issues now that I did before the surgery: clicking sound in my hip, discomfort in my groin, low-back pain. I know that I have to work with a personal trainer at some point to get on a good fitness program, so that will help. But I'm not going to be a runner again, and I fear that eventually my left hip will get worse and that I might need to go bionic at some point.

Maybe I'm just letting myself get a bit down because I've been house-bound for too long. I can't wait 'til the kids go back to school, so I can get to writing and figuring out what the heck I'm gonna do to get back into the work force.

OK, here's a reward for reading my rant. All this talk about canes and watching rap videos led me to this video, which ain't safe for work: Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane (get it?):

Heavy Reading

I've been in a great reading groove for quite some time now. I'm on my 13th book since the beginning of the year, and it's one I've been anticipating for a long while.

Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns has been on my radar since it came out three years ago. In this massive undertaking, Wilkerson, who in 1994 became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize while working as the Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times, tells the story of the emigration of African Americans from the South to the North and West that took place from World War I until the early '70s.

During that half century, approximately six million people fled the brutally repressive conditions in the Jim Crow south for cities ranging from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and New York, to Los Angeles, Oakland and Houston. They didn't know what they would find upon their arrival, and often times they surely discovered that conditions weren't much better than what they'd known back home.

I've just barely cracked this book, so this isn't a review. I just wanted to get across how excited I am to be reading this book. I'll admit that I knew next to nothing about this amazing chapter in America's history. I was aware that black Southerners headed north seeking work, and that countless Delta guitarists turned Chicago into the capital of the blues.

But I had no idea of the scope of the exodus, and never thought about the incredible bravery involved in taking part. Entire families left everything behind because they were so sick of being harassed, beaten, threatened and humiliated by white folks. Sometimes just the men left in search of work; at times it was just women. All of them went seeking something better, a place where they could spread their wings a bit, have a chance at moving upward.

Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,200 people while researching and writing this book. She uses the riveting information from their stories to build the base of the 500-plus page book, while focusing on three individuals whose stories she tells in rich, rich detail.

Here she explains her process:

I may post more about this book as I read it, and most likely something when I'm all done. I can say this, though. I recommend it already and I'm only 35 pages in.

On the Mend

I had my surgery a week ago, and things are going better than I'd anticipated. While I'm still taking pain medication, I'm not hurting as much as I thought I would be. I was imagining discomfort and inconvenience comparable to when I had my Achilles tendon repaired 15 years ago. Thankfully, arthroscopic hip surgery is much easier to deal with.

I've been reading quite a bit for the past seven days, continuing a long streak of cranking through books. Yesterday, I finished Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, a collection of essays that are mostly funny observations about adjusting to life in the U.S. compared to Europe.

I moved right on to David Comfort's The Rock & Roll Book of the Dead: The Fatal Journeys of Rock's Seven Immortals, which a friend of Beth's picked up from the YMCA's discard bin. Seriously. Somebody left this book behind after a workout and apparently enough time went by that the Y put it out for anyone to take.

The book spins tales of the lives and deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Jerry Garcia. I'm knee-deep in the Hendrix saga, which is interesting in terms of just how messed up he was mentally and pharmaceutically.

Surprisingly, I haven't been watching much TV while sitting in my living room nook, surrounded by my drugs, water, cell phone, house phone, books, magazines and computer. The only thing I've watched is some episodes of "Wilfred" from my DVR, and, occasionally, the local news.

OK, after dinner I've taken to watching "The Six Million Dollar Man" or "Charlie's Angels" reruns, but I swear, that's it. And, of course, the Red Sox.

I've also done a bit of writing. I'm working on a short story for my buddy Jim's next planned anthology, which focuses on travel. He published his first collection, Movable Feasts, earlier this year.

Much to my family's chagrin, I've been shuffling around the house, and out on the porch and front yard, while wearing my anti-embolism socks and brown slippers. I really look like an old man, let me tell ya. I believe today is the last day I need to wear the socks....

It won't be long before I'll be able to do this:

Hey Victor!

(From the movie "Smoke Signals," starring Adam Beach and written by Sherman Alexie, based on one of his short stories. I saw this movie when it came out in 1998 and to this day whenever the name Victor comes up anywhere, I imitate the goofy, braided dude in these clips.)

Sometimes it takes a long time, and a little bit of persistence, to prove you're not crazy. Not right, perhaps, but also not insane.

Roughly 20 years ago I maintained to just about anybody who would listen, that international pop superstar Prince had changed his name to Victor. This was just prior to the Purple One's decision to become known as an unpronounceable symbol. Obviously, my voice was ridiculed, lost in the clamor about how ridiculous (or awesome, depending on how you felt about Mr. Little Red Corvette's music, fashion and attitude) it was that Prince was changing his name to a provocative glyph.

Some people thought Prince made the change just to prove how Prince-y he was, that he didn't care about names and that, dammit, he could do whatever he wanted. I wasn't a Prince fan at the time, but even I had to admit that he seemed somehow sexier now that he'd shed the name that us mere mortals used, in favor of an otherworldly emblem.

Why did Prince change his name? In part because, under terms of his contract with Warner Bros., he owed the label five albums. He wanted the freedom to explore, to not toil under the demand of creating hits. So he figured by using the symbol, he could release music on a smaller label, and fulfill his Warner contract with music from his massive vault.

For more on the contract tussle, read this.

An artist as prolific and talented as Prince (I've come around on him since the early '90s, although I don't own a lick of his music) needs to constantly challenge himself. He has no desire to do the same thing, or be called the same thing, forever.

But nobody believed me when I said I'd heard that Mr. Purple Rain had at one point decided to change his name to Victor. I couldn't cite my source, but I knew I'd heard it somewhere. Over the years, this just became one of those things that made me "me." Oh, Dave's the guy who thinks Prince was going to change his name to Victor. Dave's the guy who saw "Brother From Another Planet." Dave's the guy who's into Phantom Tollbooth.

I had a chance to ask the Man himself about this, years ago, but I chickened out.

I was working at Webnoize, where I was a writer and editor. The details of how I was put in touch with His Purple Highness are lost to me, but I may have been working on a story related to the launch of Prince's paid online music club.

I was told that I could only communicate with Prince via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), an account I didn't have. One of my coworkers, however, did and was more than happy to let me use it. My coworker's last name was Karp, and his AIM screen name incorporated the name. At one point, Prince (who was supposedly using AIM through an associate as well) asked something along the lines of, "Who is this person who's named after a fish?"

I recall that his answers to my questions varied between silly and generally useless, and somewhat helpful. I printed out a partial transcript (I was unable to capture the entire text) and saved that print-out for quite a while. I wish I had kept it, so I could quote from it.

I don't remember whether I seriously considered asking him about the whole Victor thing, but I'm sure I joked about it, and I seem to recall people giving me a hard time after the fact for not broaching the subject.

With all the talk this week about the The Woman Formerly Known as Kate Middleton (now the Duchess of Cambridge) having given the British monarchy an heir to the throne, I got to thinking about good ol' Prince Rogers Nelson.

So I decided, for the first time in a long time, to seek confirmation for my Victor theory. Past efforts on Google, Yahoo! and AltaVista (I told you I've been at this a long time) were fruitless.

Finally this week Google gave me a few hits.

I found an article written by the pop music critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jim Walsh, on August 16, 1994:

In writing about Prince's song, "The Sacrifice of Victor," which is about abuse the Purple One suffered as a child, Walsh concludes this way: "Wait a sec. Did I say Prince? Scratch that. And forget all those other ones - Symbolina, TAFKAP, Victor; I think I just figured out what to call the guy.

"His name is Lazarus. And he is funky."

And from PrinceVault.com:

"Since the album (with the unpronounceable symbol) began with 'My Name Is Prince' and ended with Prince stating "...my name will be Victor", many media outlets reported that (the symbol) could be referred to as Victor, some fans even going so far as to show how the symbol could be broken to form the letters V-I-C-T-O-R."

On tour around that time, however, TAFKAP made comments that "my name ain't Prince, and it damn well ain't Victor."

So I was wrong, but I still claim vindication.

Going On the DL

I'm having arthroscopic hip surgery tomorrow, and will be on crutches for as many as six weeks. I will also need physical therapy for roughly the same amount of time. So that translates to perhaps three months of being on the disabled list.

Yesterday I went for a four-mile walk, something I will miss in the next few months. I haven't been able to run in a long time, and my surgeon told me that since I'm not an elite 48-year-old runner, I shouldn't return to that activity. So I've been enjoying walking over the last several months, two or three times a week.

I walk along a path that for much of the time is adjacent to the Charles River. I really enjoy hearing the birds, seeing other walkers, runners, cyclists and kids playing along the banks. I've been monitoring the progress of a new apartment development behind the Stop & Shop.

Simple things like walking up and down the stairs, going to the grocery store and hanging out in the neighborhood will be much more difficult for the next several weeks. I won't be able to amble about taking photos as much, either, which is why I went out today and snapped a bunch of pictures in Chelsea, a small, blue collar city just north of Boston. I'll be posting pictures broken out into a few series on my other blog, The Backside of America, in the near future.

My brother and his family, along with my sister, will be visiting here two weeks after my operation. We plan on doing some things in Boston, but I'll have to take it easy, unfortunately. I'm hoping we can do a duck boat tour and a few other things that won't tax me too much.

I'm going to miss the annual golf tournament in my hometown that I attend every year -- another bummer. I'm going to miss going to a Red Sox game with Owen on August 1st.

And I have no idea how much better I'll feel after the surgery, recovery and therapy. At this point, I'm not even sure exactly what the surgeon will do. I know he'll be cleaning out some torn cartilage that's gumming up my hip. I don't believe he's repairing the tear, but it's conceivable that he will.

The doctor told me I won't be back to 100% at any point, so I don't know what that means. Will I be able to do four-mile walks, three times a week, and not feel the discomfort in my groin, hip and lower back that I often feel? Will I be able to play softball and run the bases a bit?

Only time will tell. What I do know, is that I'm gonna have plenty of time on my hands to post updates here, and to read books, and to write a short story that I promised my buddy Jim Corrigan for his next anthology. Stay tuned....